The study attempted to decrease the talking-out behavior and increase the pre-writing skills of a 7-year-old educable mentally retarded boy in a special school for children with orthopedic handicaps. Differential reinforcement of other (DRO) behaviors was used during 30 minutes a day four times a week. Appropriate behaviors of the subjects and other students in the class were reinforced with praise. All inappropriate behaviors were ignored. A program of decreasing assistance moving from physical guidance to verbal prompts to no cues was used to increase the pre-writing behavior. Each successful attempt at any phase of the cuing was praised. The intervention resulted in decreasing talking-out behavior from 84% to 7% and increasing pre-writing behaviors from 8% to 100%. (DB)