Teaching Communication Book Use to a High School Student Using a Milieu Approach

This study combined communication book training, a milieu approach (Warren & Kaiser, 1986), and systematic vocabulary selection to teach a nonspeaking adolescent to communicate in three settings. Specifically, we conducted a systematic replication of Hamilton and Snell's (1993) instructional procedures to teach a high school student from a Spanish-speaking home to use a communication book to initiate conversation and respond to teachers, peers, and work supervisors. The student had mental retardation and was deaf and nonverbal Results indicated rapid learning of communication book use in two settings (i.e., meal preparation and employment training) and more delayed increases in a third setting (i.e., small group communication). Based on these findings, we make suggestions for future research and practice.