Abstract
This research examined the conditions necessary for students with developmental disabilities to establish self-management skills. In Study 1, self-management was studied as involving 4 behavioral components : (1) choosing the task and instructing oneself with a verbalization, (2) performing the chosen task, (3) choosing the subsequent task, and (4) reporting the completion of the tasks to a listener. Using methods of total task presentation and time-delay, self-management skills were established with minimal instruction from adults, and generalized across types and amounts of tasks, listeners and to home-based settings. In Study 2, the behavior of looking up words and writing a correct answer, which for participants had been impossible previously, was established and incorporated through a self-management behavior chain. Using prompt-fading and timedelay techniques, a behavior chain was established for all participants. They learned the correct reading or writing of previously unknown words by consulting a dictionary when the dictionary was placed away from the students. These behaviors were then also observed in home settings. The preceding results were discussed in terms of the generalization of self-management skills.
