Establishing the manding function of communicative gestures with individuals with severe/profound mental retardation.
After teaching any request, always probe with the wrong item and run a brief correction loop until the learner rejects mismatches.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Five adults with severe intellectual disability lived in a state facility. None could speak.
The team taught each person a simple hand gesture to ask for a favorite snack.
After the gesture looked solid, the researchers tested it. They offered the wrong snack. If the person took it, staff ran a quick correction: stop, guide the hand, repeat the request.
What they found
Without correction, all five adults accepted the wrong snack. Their "request" was not real.
After the brief correction loop, every adult began to reject the wrong snack.
The gesture now worked like a true mand — it only happened when they wanted that exact snack.
How this fits with other research
Lerman et al. (1995) took the same idea further. That paper maps out every variable you need to plan for when teaching requests. It turns the 1993 correction trick into a full teaching checklist.
Horner (1994) used a similar single-case style with the same population. Instead of fixing communication, it fixed problem behavior by changing what happened before the task. Both studies show that small antecedent tweaks create big behavior shifts.
Heinicke et al. (2012) looked at the learners in small groups. Systematic prompting worked almost every time. The 1993 study adds one key step: after you prompt, probe with the wrong item and run correction if needed.
Why it matters
You can test if a new mand is real in under two minutes. Offer the wrong item. If the learner takes it, run the four-step correction: interrupt, guide the hand, restate the request, try again. Do this until they reject the mismatch. This quick probe keeps you from moving forward with fake communication.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Procedures for teaching communicative gestures to individuals with mental retardation are focused mostly on establishing requesting or manding. It is often taken for granted that when a student has been taught to make a request, that he or she is indeed manding. Five students with severe/profound mental retardation accepted referents, regardless of whether the referents matched the gestures they made. Apparently, their responding could not be defined as manding. A correction procedure, including interruption, physical guidance, verbal instruction, and repetition, was then applied and increased the individuals' correct rejecting of unmatching referents. Data were collected within a multiple baseline design across individuals. It is suggested that assessing student's response when the trainer or teacher delivers items that do not match the referent of a prior request is a necessary part of each training program.
Research in developmental disabilities, 1993 · doi:10.1016/0891-4222(93)90004-4