Using Simultaneous Prompting to Teach Restaurant Words and Classifications as Non-target Information to Secondary Students with Moderate to Severe Disabilities

This paper reviews selected literature pertaining to simultaneous prompting and the acquisition of non-target information for individuals with moderate to severe disabilities. The purpose of this review was to discuss the definition of non-target information (NTI) and the various places it can be embedded within an instructional trial. The acquisition of NTI has become especially critical to teachers who serve this population of students. Incidental learning provides teachers with an opportunity to increase a student's exposure to information without increasing instructional time, therefore increasing the efficiency of the teacher's instruction. A multiple probe design with full conditions across behaviors and replicated across participants evaluated the effectiveness of simultaneous prompting (SP) when teaching four participants with moderate and severe disabilities to read 12 sight words from community restaurants. In addition, the researcher examined generalization of the non-target information provided in the discriminative stimulus. Data indicated that SP was effective in teaching the participants the targeted sight words and the participants maintained the knowledge at high rates over time. Additionally, participants acquired NTI knowledge of the food classification embedded in the discriminative stimulus.