Effects of community-based, videotape, and flash card instruction of community-referenced sight words on students with mental retardation.
Flash cards or video plus prompt delay teach community sight words fast and they stick in real places.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tested three ways to teach community sight words to students with intellectual disability.
One group used flash cards. One watched a videotape. One practiced with real signs in the neighborhood.
Each student got a short delay before the teacher gave the answer. This is called constant prompt delay.
What they found
All three methods worked fast. Students learned the words in days, not weeks.
Best part: the kids could read the same words on real street signs after only card or video practice.
How this fits with other research
Dube et al. (1991) used the same prompt-fading trick one year earlier, but taught spelling instead of sight words.
LeFrancois et al. (1993) added delayed matching-to-sample right after this study and still saw quick gains.
Pachis et al. (2019) repeated the video-vs-cards idea with older adults learning tablet tasks. Again, both formats won.
Why it matters
You do not need fancy gear or community trips to teach functional reading. Flash cards or a simple video plus a three-second prompt delay can give rapid, real-world generalization. Try it next week: pick five survival signs, run ten flash-card trials with a three-second delay, then test the learner at the actual crosswalk.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Community-referenced sight words and phrases were taught to adolescents with mild and moderate mental retardation using three instructional methods in two locations. Words were presented on flash cards in a school setting, on videotape recordings in a school setting, and on naturally occurring signs in the community. During each session, participants were taught one third of the words in each of these conditions and were then tested at the community sites. A constant prompt delay procedure was used to promote stimulus control to the experimenter's cue initially and then to transfer control to the textual stimuli used for training. A multiple baseline across participants design was employed. Results showed rapid acquisition of the community-referenced sight words in all three training conditions and generalization from the flash card and videotape conditions to the community sites.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1992 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1992.25-499