Facilitating generalization. The effectiveness of improved parental report procedures.
Written parent instructions work as well as staff home visits for generalizing daily living skills, and they cost less.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers worked with three adults who had intellectual disability.
Each adult had learned daily living skills at a center, like setting a table.
The team wanted these skills to also happen at home.
They tested two ways to make that happen.
One way: center staff visited homes and practiced the skills with the adults.
The other way: parents got clear written instructions and a simple form to record what their adult child did.
The study used a multiple-baseline design across the three adults.
What they found
Both methods worked.
Adults used the skills correctly at home after either staff visits or parent reports.
The surprise: parent reports worked just as well as expensive home visits.
Parents followed the written steps and marked the form.
Their adult children kept doing the skills without staff in the home.
Center staff saved time and travel costs.
How this fits with other research
Verschuur et al. (2019) and Minjarez et al. (2011) extend this 1986 finding to autism.
They showed that group parent training in PRT also cuts costs while still boosting child skills.
Whiteside et al. (2022) further extends the idea by using mediated learning principles instead of written task lists.
All three later studies confirm the core message: parents can drive generalization without staff home visits.
Tsiouri et al. (2012) used a similar single-case parent-plus-therapist package, but focused on first words rather than daily living skills.
The methods differ, yet the cost-saving logic stays the same.
Why it matters
You can stop sending staff into homes for every skill.
Instead, give parents a one-page task analysis and a short checklist.
You save hours of travel and still see the skill at home.
Try it next week with one family and track the data.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The effectiveness of two procedures for promoting the generalization of adaptive skills across settings by mentally retarded clients was evaluated. Participants were 10 mentally retarded clients of a community day training center. Observations of self-care and domestic skills acquired at the center were conducted at home, on the percentage of steps of each skill task analysis completed correctly. Parents of one group received written instructions describing how to practice the skills with their offspring at home. A second group received remediation training at home by center staff. A multiple-baseline design across participants and behaviors was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the two procedures. In addition, a cost analysis of each procedure was conducted. Results indicated that the parent report and home remediation procedures were both effective in increasing correct skill completion. However, the home remediation procedure cost more, with increased costs attributed to training time. The parent report procedure was, therefore, the preferred procedure.
Behavior modification, 1986 · doi:10.1177/01454455860104003