Date of Award

8-1-2024

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Jonathan C. Baker, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Sacha Pence, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Heather McGee, Ph.D.

Fourth Advisor

Andrea Perez, Ph.D.

Abstract

Adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are often dependent on direct care staff to engage in daily activities, such as personal care, eating, and engaging in leisure activities. One way direct care staff can support adults with IDD to become more independent is by using prompting strategies. Often times, however, direct care staff have not been trained on how to use prompts to encourage independence. Current studies have demonstrated success in teaching direct care staff prompting strategies in personal care tasks (e.g., Engelman et al., 2002; Parsons et al., 1993) through behavioral skills training. Although the trainings produced an increase in performance, the skills did not generalize to the natural environment. The current literature also has been limited to residential settings, limited to self-care tasks, required a significant number of resources, and did not include variables similar to the working conditions. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to expand the current literature on prompting strategies and to compare two training approaches on skill acquisition and generalization outside of training. One training method included role play and feedback, while the other training method included in-situ training. Six participants were included in the study. All participants demonstrated an increase in performance in using least to most prompting with adults with IDD during art activities. Results indicated that in-situ training produced faster skill acquisition than role play and rehearsal. Such results suggest that providing in-situ training is a necessary component for response generalization.

Access Setting

Dissertation-Open Access

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Psychology Commons

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