A Functional Approach to Teaching Generalized Street Crossing

Abstract

The effects of general case instruction for teaching street crossing to individuals with moderate and severe mental retardation were examined. Three dependent variables were assessed within a multiple baseline probe design across subjects. The first measure was performance across a group of 20 nontrained streets systematically selected to represent the range of street crossing situations encountered in the subjects' home town. The second dependent variable was performance across 20 additional nontrained streets selected individually for each subject by parents or guardians as particularly relevant in the subject's daily life. The third dependent variable was the number of training trials to criterion. Two subjects completed training with the third serving as a no-treatment control. Results support the effectiveness and efficiency of general case instruction for teaching subjects to cross nontrained streets. Implications for further research on generalization and for instructional programming in the community are addressed.