Effects of reinforcement and guidance procedures on instruction-following behavior of severely retarded children.
Reinforcement plus brief hand guidance and fading quickly builds instruction-following in children with severe ID and spreads to new commands.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Burgess et al. (1971) worked with two children who had severe intellectual disability. The kids rarely followed simple instructions like "sit down" or "come here."
The team used a three-part package: praise and candy for correct responses, gentle hand-over-hand help when the child hesitated, and then less help each trial. They ran an ABAB design: baseline, training, back to baseline, then training again.
What they found
Both kids jumped from almost zero compliance to high levels the moment training started. When rewards and guidance stopped, the skills dropped. When the package returned, the skills shot back up.
Best part: the children started obeying brand-new commands they had never been taught. The gains spread without extra work.
How this fits with other research
Migler et al. (1969) showed that simple rewards could teach visual tasks to children labeled blind. Burgess et al. (1971) added physical guidance and fading, proving the combo works for compliance too.
Silbaugh et al. (2018) reused the same gentle guidance for food refusal. Once snacks and praise failed, adding hand-over-hand help quickly produced acceptance of new foods. The tactic crosses skill areas.
Goodwin et al. (2012) swapped physical help for picture cards and still got broad gains in preschoolers. The prompt type can change; the fading logic stays.
Gorgan et al. (2019) later compared prompt-fading styles head-to-head and found no single winner. Kids differ, so keep multiple tools ready.
Why it matters
If you have a client who ignores instructions, pair praise with brief physical guidance and fade the help fast. Watch for generalization to untaught commands; it often appears after only a few mastered tasks. When progress stalls, borrow from later studies: try pictorial prompts or run a quick comparison of fading styles to find the best fit for that child.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Positive reinforcement, physical guidance, and fading procedures were used to teach two severely retarded children motor responses to a variety of verbal instructions. Subjects' responses to one set of instructions provided the focus for the training procedures. Their responses to a second set of instructions were used to assess the generalized effects of training. The frequency of responses to both sets of instructions was evaluated during Baseline 1, Training 1, Baseline 2, and Training 2 periods. During the training periods, this evaluation was made after the daily training sessions when no training procedures were in effect. Results indicated that the subjects showed pronounced increases in instruction-following behaviors (both trained and untrained) during training periods with decreases in such behavior occurring during the Baseline 2 period. The general findings demonstrate the applicability of the training procedures for producing and maintaining instruction-following behaviors in severely retarded children and for facilitating appropriate responding to instructions not directly involved in training.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1971 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1971.4-283