“Say Cheese”: Teaching photography skills to adults with developmental disabilities

Abstract

We evaluated a video prompting procedure to teach adults with developmental disabilities to take a digital photograph and print it using a laptop computer and a printer. Participants were four men with developmental disabilities. Training was conducted at the participants’ residential facility. During baseline, participants were told to take a photograph, but were given no other instruction. During intervention, participants received instruction using a video prompting procedure. Video prompting consisted of watching a clip of each step of the task analysis and then having the opportunity to imitate that step. Video prompting was evaluated using a multiple-probe across participants design. Following acquisition, video prompting was removed to assess maintenance at 2, 4 and 8 weeks and at 6 months. During naturalistic probes, participants had the opportunity to take a picture of their choice of flora, surroundings or persons. All four participants learned to take and print a digital photograph with the video prompting procedures. The skills generalized to novel situations and were maintained at each follow-up probe. These data suggest that video prompting may be an effective instructional strategy for teaching digital photography skills to adults with developmental disabilities.