Teaching Three Severely Retarded Children to Follow Instructions

An analysis of teaching simple instruction-following behavior was completed with three subjects with Down's syndrome. Two approaches were examined and compared to determine the extent to which they yielded effective instructional control. One approach involved the continual use of a model; the other involved withdrawing the model following its initial use in training. In comparing the effects of the two training approaches, an alternating treatments design was applied within a multiple baseline. The results indicate that the subjects did not consistently follow those instructions taught with continual modeling. The subjects did follow those instructions trained with the modeling component discontinued. The use of an alternating treatments design incorporated within a multiple baseline was illustrated. The findings suggest that modeling should be discontinued when teaching instruction-following behavior to severely retarded children.