The report describes the Kona Infant and Child Development Program for developmentally delayed/disabled/high risk children in the rural areas of West Hawaii. The first chapter of the report presents geographic and demographic background information and reviews the services prior to 1978 when the Kona program began. Chapter 2 describes the three…

The presentation deals with four of the factors that have made the Illinois Developmental Centers for the Retarded a success. The following four factors are discussed: (1) the philosophy that the developmentally disabled are individuals and members of society with rights and privileges due all citizens; (2) intensive staff development programs…

A life career education program for 35 elementary multiply handicapped retarded students resulted in positive changes in areas of academics, communication, interest, self-concept, self-help, and task performance. (CL)

A great deal is known about the effects of positive reinforcement on response acquisition; by contrast, much less research has been conducted on contingencies applied to errors. We examined the effects of response repetition as an error-correction procedure on the sight-word reading performance of 11 adults with developmental disabilities. Study 1…

Primary health care nurses are frequently overlooked when delivering services to children with developmental disabilities, despite the fact that they are often the first contact many primary caregivers have with rehabilitation professionals and usually remain the bridge between caregivers and professionals. A time series one group design with…

"On Campus" is an inclusive education initiative for persons with developmental disabilities at the University of Alberta. Now celebrating its 20th Anniversary, we pause to reflect on the implementation, structure, function and evolution of the program, the first of its kind globally. Increasing social change has led to more and more…

Students with developmental disabilities often rely on prelinguistic behavior (e.g., reaching, leading) to communicate. When listeners fail to attend to prelinguistic behaviors, students may benefit from responding with an alternative form of communication to repair the breakdown. In the present study, we taught two students with developmental…

Staff at a day program were trained in Augmentative/Alternative Communication (AAC) strategies and techniques. The goal was to provide training that would allow staff at the centre to use communication strategies when working with their clients. Two training sessions were provided on AAC and communication strategies for all staff at the centre.…

In this article, the author offers his critique on Holburn and Cea's notion on "excessive positivism" that person-centered planners are overconcerned with scientific verification and logical proof. The author believes that Holburn and Cea's notion blurs the important messages they have for person-centered planners by leading toward a debate about…

The article defines leadership training and presents data on the impact of University Affiliated Facilities (UAF) programs which provide interdisciplinary advanced clinical training in areas related to improved care for mentally retarded and handicapped children and their families. Two conceptual approaches to UAF leadership training are…

A curriculum development model was formulated for training resident advisors (RAs) to work with developmentally disabled clients in small community homes. Overall findings suggested that the alternative living arrangement pilot training programs were highly effective in helping students acquire the knowledge and skills requisite to successful RA…

An evaluation of a successful summer camp for youth with developmental disabilities (Camp Horizons) identifies practices that should work well in other youth programs. The natural, personalized setting favors worthwhile relationships with satisfying human bonds. The ecological evaluation approach is also explored. (SLD)

Preschool children (n=194) with special needs enrolled in the Model Preschool Program for Children with Down Syndrome and Other Developmental Delays exhibited significantly higher rates of development during intervention than when the children entered the program. Effects were mixed for the 92 children with Down syndrome, with higher rates of…

In the high-probability request sequence (high-p) procedure, a requester presents a rapid sequence of requests a child is known to be likely to comply with, followed by a request to perform a response for which there is a low probability of compliance (low-p request). To extend previous research from institutional and research settings to home…