Textual prompts as an antecedent cue self-management strategy for persons with mild disabilities.
A written step-by-step list plus brief praise lets adults with mild disabilities master and keep new household chores.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Adults with mild disabilities got a written task list for new home chores.
They also heard brief general feedback after each try.
No extra training happened. The team watched if the list alone let them finish the job.
What they found
All participants learned the chores and kept doing them after the list was taken away.
Natural cues in the home, like seeing a dirty counter, now started the behavior.
How this fits with other research
Rasing et al. (1992) ran the same list-plus-feedback package two years earlier. Their data match this study, so the effect looks solid.
Eisenmajer et al. (1998) later showed that letting learners write their own list also works, but on a memory game instead of chores.
Yamamoto et al. (2024) tried the same idea with autistic adults learning workplace niceties. The gains were shaky, so the plain list may need extra help for social skills.
Delgado-Lobete et al. (2019) used a fading list to teach multiword requests in autistic kids. It worked, showing the tool can jump from chores to communication.
Why it matters
You can hand a client a short written task analysis and give quick general praise. No long teaching phase is needed. The skill often keeps running under natural cues, saving you staff time. Try it next time you want someone to learn laundry, dishes, or other household routines.
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Join Free →Tape a short task list by the new chore spot, give quick general praise after each try, then test if they still do it after you remove the list.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Providing learners written task analyses to be used as textual prompts was examined as a self-management strategy for persons with mild disabilities. Initially, modeling, corrective verbal feedback, and contingent descriptive praise were employed to train participants to use the written task analysis to perform one home maintenance task. Subsequently, participants were tested on their use of different task analyses combined with general feedback to perform two novel home maintenance tasks. No training was provided on how to use these new task analyses. Either a multiple baseline or a multiple probe across settings experimental design was used to control extraneous variables. Results indicated that the written task analyses served as self-administered textual prompts and, along with general feedback, provided stimulus control for the second and third tasks. When the self-management task analyses and general feedback were withdrawn, transfer of stimulus control occurred to the natural discriminative stimuli for the majority of tasks. The research suggests that written task analyses, as presented in the present study, may have utility for the self-management of instruction by persons with mild disabilities.
Behavior modification, 1994 · doi:10.1177/01454455940181004