The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the general case instruction on the acrluisition and generalization of purchasing skills by adolescents with autism. Three male adolescents with autism were recruited to participate in this s...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the general case instruction on the acrluisition and generalization of purchasing skills by adolescents with autism. Three male adolescents with autism were recruited to participate in this study. The experiment was conducted using a multiple probe design across subjects from Aug. 11 to Nov. 4, 2003.
General case instruction consisted of two teaching examples which sampled a universe of instructional cases (supermarkets which the participants are likely to visit in neighborhood). Purchasing skills were a series of 16 tasks the participants were expected to peform to purchase the items at supermarkets. During intervention, the researcher individually taught the participant to purchase two items as they wanted up to 2,000-won. The participants were asked to perform purchasing skills at two new supermarkets after intervention. At four weeks after the termination of the intervention, data were collected to examine the maintenance of the general case instruction. The results were as follows:
First, the general case instruction was found to improve the participants' purchasing skills, their purchasing skills increased, on the average, from 33.86% at baseline to 76.17 during intervention.
Second, the general case instruction was shown to generalize the participants' purchasing skills to new environments which were not used during the intervention, the participants purchased the items with an average of 90 percent correct.
Lastly, the general case instruction was effective to maintain the participants' purchasing skills at four weeks after intervention, the participants performed purchasing skills with an average of 86 percent correct.