The acquisition of independent dressing skills by students with multiple disabilities

Abstract

A 5-second constant time delay procedure was successful in teaching two students with multiple disabilities four dressing skills: putting on shirt, pants, socks, and jacket. Training was conducted with multiple examplars of oversized clothing. Criterion was based on student performance during daily probe sessions in which students were required to dress with their own regular-sized clothing. A multiple probe design across behaviors and replicated across students was used to evaluate the training procedure. Both students acquired the targeted dressing skills and generalized responses to their own clothing. The procedure resulted in a low percentage of student errors (1.35%). In addition, students maintained the behaviors with 87–100% accuracy over an 18 week period of time. Follow-up data collected during the next school year indicated that students completed the behaviors with at least a mean of 83% accuracy.