A comparison of external and self-instructional teaching formats with mentally retarded adults in a vocational training setting.
Teaching adults with ID to talk themselves through job steps beats staff directions and keeps the skill longer.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Adults with intellectual disability learned a vocational sequencing task.
One group heard staff give step-by-step directions.
The other group learned to talk themselves through the steps out loud.
Both groups practiced until they got every step right.
What they found
Self-talk adults made fewer errors during training.
They still scored higher when staff returned a week later.
The gap was smaller on a new but similar task, yet the trend stayed the same.
How this fits with other research
Davison et al. (1984) showed adults with ID can watch their own work pace and keep output high after staff praise stops. Green et al. (1987) move the spotlight from speed to accuracy and add a script kids say to themselves.
Roberts et al. (1987) ran the same self-versus-staff comparison with typical first graders doing math. Both studies find self-instruction wins, proving the trick works from classrooms to workshops.
van Timmeren et al. (2016) traded paper scripts for iPhone videos and moved to teens with autism. All four teens learned to hit play on their own, cutting adult prompts. The 1987 study planted the seed; the 2016 study shows it still grows in pocket-sized form.
Why it matters
If you train adults with ID for jobs, start with short self-scripts they can say while working. You will see cleaner performance and longer-lasting skill. Fade the script to a whisper, then a thought, just like you fade any prompt. One practical move: write a three-step rhyme for the next packaging task and teach the worker to say it before each box.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Pick one multi-step job task, write a short self-instruction script, and teach your client to say it before each shift.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
A theory recently proposed by Whitman postulates that self-instructional training procedures should have special utility for low ability individuals. Although past studies have shown that self-instructional training programs can be employed to improve the performance of mentally retarded individuals in work situations, research has not examined whether this training format is superior to external instruction. To test Whitman's theory, mentally retarded adults were taught to perform a complex sequencing task through one of two training formats: self-instruction or external instruction. Performance was evaluated through the examination of accuracy measures obtained during training, maintenance, and generalization assessments. Results indicated that participants receiving self-instructional training were able to achieve and sustain a higher level of performance than participants receiving external instruction. While self-instructionally trained subjects also showed superior performance on the generalization assessment, these results were not statistically significant. Secondary analyses revealed that higher ability participants, self-instructionally trained participants, and participants who reached criterion on the training and generalization tasks self-verbalized more frequently during the various assessments. In contrast to prediction, there was no significant difference in the length of time required to train individuals in the two instructional groups.
Research in developmental disabilities, 1987 · doi:10.1016/0891-4222(87)90020-5