Gerald D. Faw

A rapid training procedure for teaching manual sign language skills to multidisciplinary institutional staff.

The benefits of teaching manual sign language skills to severely and profoundly mentally retarded persons are becoming well documented. However, if these individuals are to use manual signing for functional communication, then their daily caregivers must also be skilled in the use of signs. In this study, a program for teaching signing skills to institutional personnel was evaluated. The generality of the programs effectiveness was investigated in three studies involving different groups of staff: paraprofessional direct care staff, specialty habilitation persons, and nurses. Results showed that the training program, consisting of written and verbal instructions, modeling, practice, and verbal feedback, was effective in rapidly teaching signs to all participating staff members. Also, the acquired signing skills maintained over time, the program was well received by staff, and staff used the signs in their routine interactions with institutionalized residents. Results are discussed with respect to the need to insure that handicapped individuals have a manual signing community with which to use their signing skills and to important components of effective staff training programs.

Replacing maladaptive speech with verbal labeling responses: A case study promoting generalized responding

We taught a mentally handicapped student to answer five questions with verbal labels and evaluated the generalized effects of this training on his echolalia and correct responding to five untrained questions. The student received cuespause-point training on an initial five question set followed by generalization assessments on a different set in another setting. Generalization to untrained questions did not occur until training was instituted on two exemplars from the untrained set. These results replicate and extend previous research that suggested that cuespause-point procedures may be useful in replacing maladaptive language strategies by teaching students an alternative strategy that involves using their verbal labeling repertoires. They also suggest that training exemplars is a viable means of promoting the generalized use of this strategy.