"The Effects of Visual Cues, Prompting, and Feedback within Activity Sc" by Karrie Lindeman, Mary E. McDonald et al.
Activity schedules are visual support strategies that use visual cues, such as photographs and/or written words, to teach a learner to engage in a sequence of tasks or activities independently. Until recently, research on activity schedules has involved one schedule being followed by one individual. In order to facilitate cooperation between two individuals to complete one task, and to increase engagement between peers, cooperative activity schedules are being introduced as interventions in educating students with autism. A multiple baseline design across three activities was used to assess the effects of including an instructional package consisting of visual cues, prompting, and feedback to increase cooperation within an activity schedule between two students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This design was replicated across two pairs of participants. Baseline data indicated a lack of cooperation across both of the pairs. Following intervention, an increase in cooperation amongst both of the pairs was demonstrated. All prompting and reinforcement systems were effectively faded out for both pairs, and 2-week and 1-month follow up probes indicated cooperation maintained in the presence of the visual cue.
Originally published in Special Education Research, Policy & Practice, 1(1), 5-27. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. The original material can be found here.