Effectiveness of immediate verbal feedback on trainer behaviour during communication training with individuals with intellectual disability.

The authors watched university trainers teach communication skills to adults with intellectual disability.

When a trainer skipped a prompt or gave the reinforcer late, the supervisor gave a quick verbal correction within the session.

They tracked how many teaching steps each trainer got right before, during, and after the feedback.

The 30-second corrections lifted trainer accuracy right away.

Good scores stayed high weeks later with no extra coaching.

Aznar et al. (2005) ran the same idea in special-ed classrooms. Teachers got feedback every two weeks and their behavior-plan fidelity doubled. The two studies line up: brief feedback keeps adults sharp.

Keintz et al. (2011) swapped spoken words for video clips. Caregivers of clients with visual and intellectual disabilities watched tapes and improved their responses to client cues. Video works too, but it takes longer than the 30-second talk used here.

Sobsey et al. (1983) did the opposite schedule. Parents got a one-hour booster with graphed feedback after skills had already dropped. The session brought their accuracy back. Lattal (2004) shows you can skip the big booster if you give tiny fixes all along.

You do not need long meetings or piles of graphs. A quiet word right after the error keeps trainers accurate and saves client learning time. Try one spoken reminder next session and watch the teaching steps line up.