Establishing derived requesting skills in adults with severe developmental disabilities.

Ruth Anne Rehfeldt & Shannon L. Root (2005). Establishing derived requesting skills in adults with severe developmental disabilities. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 38, 101-105.

This project examined whether a history of reinforced relational responding would result in derived requesting skills in 3 adults with disabilities. Participants were first taught to request preferred items using pictures; they were then taught conditional discriminations between pictures and their dictated names and between dictated names and their corresponding text. Finally, requests for preferred items using corresponding text were evaluated. All 3 participants demonstrated derived requesting skills.

DESCRIPTORS: request, mand, derived stimulus relations, mental retardation