The effectiviness of antecedent prompt and testing on teaching menstural care skills to youth with mental retardation

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effectiveness of antecedentprompt and testing procedure (APTP) on teaching youth with mental retardationchanging sanitary napkins on a doll. The following research questions were addressedin the study: (a) the effectiveness of APTP on teaching changing sanitary napkins on adoll to girls with mental retardation, (b) the maintenance effects of APTP 5, 11, and 20days after the instruction was over, (c) the effects of multiple examplar methods ongeneralizing the changing sanitary napkins to various examples, and (d) the opinions ofthe parents of the youth about teaching this skill.The study was conducted with three girls with mental retardation. The sessionswere conducted in the bathroom of each subject?s house with one to one teachingarrangement. A multiple probe design with probe conditions across subjects was used.Dependent variable of the study was changing sanitary napkins on a doll. Independentvariable of the study was APTP. The study was composed of probe, instruction,maintenance, and generalization sessions.The findings showed that subjects (a) learned to change sanitary napkins on adoll, (b) maintained the acquired behavior to a certain extend, (c) generalized theacquired behavior to various examples. Besides these findings, the opinions of theparents of the subjects were positive overall.Keywords: Antecedent prompt and testing, generalization, menstrual care skills,mental retardation.