Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities

The Board of Directors of the Division on Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities (MRDD) have approved a position statement on program design for students with mental retardation. The position holds that programs for students with mental retardation, including placement decisions and curricular choices, should be determined based on the individual needs of students and not by philosophical considerations. While more and more students with mental retardation are appropriately being integrated into regular classroom settings and provided access to the regular curriculum, some students may need continued specialized programs such as community-based instruction and functional curricula. The position of the Board is simply that students' need drive programs, not philosophy or other concerns. Programs that are appropriate for individual students should be the goal of special educators, not the implementation of a philosophical orientation that might not result in appropriate services for some students.

Consideration of post-school outcomes when assessing educational effectiveness has led to the recog- nition that programming for students with mental retardation should include efforts to promote student self-determination. The present study examined the psychological empowerment of youth with mental retar- dation. Locus of control orientations, perceptions of efficacy and outcome expectancies of adolescents with mental retardation were evaluated and differences between a subset of this sample, students with learning disabilities and youth at risk for failure yet not labeled with a disability were determined. Results from these analyses are presented to provide an understanding of the psychological empowerment of youth with mental retardation. Possibilities for these outcomes regarding the development of self-determination are discussed.

We compared the effectiveness of immediate and delayed supervision procedures on the acquisition, generalization and maintenance of systematic instruction skills by two preservice teachers who were receiving practicum experiences in a classroom for students with severe disabilities. Behaviors targeted for intervention were: (a) the appropriate use of positive consequences, and (b) the appropriate use of systems of instructional prompts. Generalization of the teaching skills to other classroom lessons was examined. Results indicated that immediate feedback was more effective for both participants. Participants also maintained the skills at or near criterion responding for up to five weeks following the removal of supervision. Generalization results were mixed.

Assessment of the pragmatic components of verbal behavior has largely focused on the dyadic interaction between mother and child. The present study used direct observation procedures to analyze communicative intent and subsequent frequency of turntaking between adults with developmental disabilities and their residential staff. An analysis of turntaking patterns suggested that in group discourse, questioning-type speech may have set the occasion for a greater number of subsequent conversational turns, than did command or declarative-type speech. The implications of this finding are discussed in terms of residential staff training and recent literature concerning mother-child interaction.

Research indicates that sequence errors occur at a relatively high rate when training chained tasks to students with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities. Sequence errors occur when students are required to perform chained tasks in a predetermined specified order. Since near-errorless learning is an important factor when educating these students, formats should be assessed that reduce sequence errors. Reducing sequence errors may be accomplished by allowing a student, during training, to perform a chained task in any order, as long as it is functional (i.e., the result is the same as it would have been had the task been performed in a specific order). This research study indicated that there was a difference in numerous efficiency measures when students acquired chained tasks in a specific order versus a functional order. Data indicate that tasks taught with the functional procedure were acquired in fewer sessions, in less time, and with fewer errors when learned by elementary-aged students with moderate intellectual disabilities.

In this study we utilized interrupted behavior chain strategies to teach multiple exemplars of requesting objects to four individuals with moderate to severe disabilities. Participants were taught to request objects, by using the manual signs “want” or “please” + object label sign, within the context of familiar activities from which a needed object was missing. A non-concurrent multiple-baseline design was employed and all instruction occurred during natural activities within the participant's homes. Three participants lived in a large state-operated residential habilitation center while the fourth lived in her own apartment in a local community with support from a residential service agency. Results indicated that all participants acquired a generic requesting response (want or please) and 3 acquired an explicit requesting response (want or please + object label sign) to request objects for which they had not received training.

This is the third in a series of articles about special education for persons with mental retardation in Germany. Previous article published in this periodical described the development of special education during the 19th Century and the role of special education under National Socialist domination. After the war Germany faced enormous obstacles in rebuilding special education. Special educators had to overcome the terrible legacy of the Third Reich toward persons with disabilities. Their goal was to regain the interna-tional respect they had earned prior to fascist domination of their country. Currently, German special education faces many difficult issues in the pursuit of this goal including those produced by the reunification of the two Germanies.