A comparison of a gestural prompt and a teacher model on the acquisition of daily living skills

Purpose The purpose of this study is to compare two prompting strategies, gestural prompt and teacher model, to identify which was more efficient in teaching a daily living skills task of folding clothes to two autistic adolescent males with a diagnosis of a severe learning disability. The study was an adapted replication of a study by Sabielny and Cannella-Marone (2014) where physical prompting only was compared with physical combined with vocal prompting on the acquisition of folding clothes. Design/methodology/approach An alternating treatment design, with the two prompting strategies counterbalanced across tasks, was used. Findings Results showed that the gestural prompt and teacher model were both successful in teaching participants to fold clothes, however, the teacher model supported a faster acquisition rate. It is recommended that the teacher model is the prompting strategy used for these participants for the teaching of future new skills. This study demonstrates the importance of determining the most efficient prompting strategy to teach new skills based on individual’s needs. Originality/value This research can be easily replicated and used to adapt teaching strategies to encourage further independence. It is important to determine the most efficient prompting strategy for an individual to ensure that more learning can take place in the future.