Teaching a Severely Handicapped Deaf-Blind Young Woman to Prepare Breakfast Foods

Abstract

A severely handicapped deaf-blind young woman was taught to prepare three breakfast foods—cereal, chocolate milk, and juice—with an instructional package that consisted of tactile recipe cards, a positional tray, and systematic prompting. A multiple-probe design across the breakfast foods was used to demonstrate experimental control in her acquisition and generalization of the skills of matching the tactile recipe cards to the corresponding items of food, taking food items from the positional tray in a left-to-right sequence, and preparing the breakfast foods. The results indicated faster acquisition of the skills with each successive breakfast food introduced and generalization across a second staff member for a period of 15 consecutive maintenance training sessions.