Date of Award
1980
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Department
Graduate School
First Advisor
Michael J. Davis
First Committee Member
Martin T. Gipson
Second Committee Member
Tom S. Allison
Third Committee Member
Mary Lynn Young
Abstract
Conversational skills training was administered to two developmentally delayed male residents of a board and care home to increase each subject's use of encouraging comments and on-topic questions during conversations with another resident. The effects of the skills training package of instructions, behavior rehearsal, modeling, and feedback were assessed in a multiple-baseline design across the behaviors of encouraging comments and on-topic questions. Training was successful in that each subject increased his use of both target conversational behaviors above criterion level. The two subjects who received training were also assessed to see if the conversational behavior generalized to a third subject. This subject was also an adult, developmentally delayed male resident of the home. The two target behaviors generalized to the third subject during a single follow-up observation session. In addition, follow-up assessments for the two trained subjects indicated that each subject's increased use of encouraging comments and on-topic questions in conversation persisted over a one week period. The conversational skills training also resulted in an improvement in their social speech. Four judges, blind with respect to training conditions and subjects, subjectively rated the conversational behavior of each of the subjects on a bi-polar (1 = poor, 10 = excellent) rating scale while listening to pre-training and post-training tapes. All four judges rated each of the trained subjects as a better conversationalist after training.
Pages
53
Recommended Citation
Carey, Michael C.. (1980). Conversational skills training for developmentally delayed board and care home residents. University of the Pacific, Thesis. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/2026
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