The Effect of “Opportunity to Perform” on the Maintenance of Skills Learned by High School Students with Severe Handicaps

Abstract

The likelihood that learned skills will be maintained in natural performance settings may be affected by the number of opportunities to perform the skills following acquisition. To examine this hypothesis, 17 high school students with moderate to severe mental retardation were selected from three public school classrooms. Each student had learned one adaptive skill that he or she had performed at least twice per month without additional training for 5 months prior to this study (high opportunity). Each student had also learned one adaptive skill that he or she had not performed more often than once per month over the 5 months immediately preceding the study (low opportunity). Performance of both behaviors was probed under conditions as similar as possible to those experienced during training. Twelve of the 17 high opportunity skills were performed successfully while only 4 of the 17 low opportunity skills were completed. A sign test indicated these differences to be statistically significant. Implications of the results for selection of IEP goals and the inclusion of “opportunity” objectives are discussed.