The effects of simultaneous prompting procedure on writing skills teaching on word documents to children with mental retardation

This study was designed to examine the effectiveness of simultaneous prompting on teaching writing skills by using Microsoft word program to three children with mental retardation. Moreover, generalization and maintenance effects of simultaneous prompting were investigated in the study.Multiple probe design across subjects which was one at the single subject designs was used as the research design.The study consisted of 5 children who are mentally retarded. The subjects were attending to a scholl at ?T.S.K. Güvercinlik Gülsav Özel Eğitim Ve Rehabilitasyon Kursu? , in Ankara during 2006-2007 education year. Three students of those students who committed to participate in the study was involved in treatment. One of those five was held in the list incase of possible problem.The last one participated in the pilot study.In onder to collect the data, a teacher and family interview from, a skill checklist, criterion- referenced tests and data record sheets to use during simultaneous prompting procedure, procedural reliabity forms, reinforcement forms toward children and social validity forms toward family and teacher were developed and used. Simultaneous prompting procedure instruction plans were prepared and applied by the investigator.Visual graphical analysis method was used in the analysis of the data.According to the results, simultaneous prompting procedure was effective on teaching writing skills by using microsoft word program word document to three children with mental retardation.Maintanence and generalization data showed that students maintained the writing skill 7,14 and 21 day after the teaching and the writing skill was generalized to different location, tools,individuals and documents. Also families of children and classroom teachers offered a positive opinion toward learning writing skills by using word document via simultaneous prompting procedure.