Study objectives: The goals of the present research were to examine the effects of social skills training (SST) for beauticians on the number of customers who requested a beautician by name, and to explore some key factors that may make social skills training more effective. Experiment 1: Participants: 20 beauticians. Independent variable: Training in the following social skills: smiling, speaking in a clear voice, listening actively, chatting, and providing explanations. Dependent variable: The score on each skill, and the number of customers requesting each beautician by name. Design: Multiple baseline. Results: After social skills training, the smile and the voice skill scores increased. The more the listening skill scores of a beautician increased, the more customers requested that beautician. Furthermore, it was suggested that the rate of increase of the listening skill scores may be related to the beauticians' filling in a self-recording sheet of their service behavior during working hours. Experiment 2: Participants: 8 beauticians. Independent variable: Modified social skills training. Dependent variable: Scores on each skill. Designs: AB design and group design. Results: Training on each of the skills improved the beauticians' overall scores, exceptforthe chatting skill. Conclusion: The present experiments suggest that social skills training for beauticians has the potential to increase the number of customers who request them. Of paramount importance is developing their listening skill. Factors that may make social skills training more effective for beauticians include focusing on short-term training for a specific skill, and having them continue to fill in a self-recording sheet.

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Study objective: The present study examined the effects of adding imitation training to the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) for children with autism. Design: ABCA design: Baseline, PECS training, PECS with imitation training, and maintenance test. Setting: A playroom in a day training center. Participants: 4 children (1 boy, 3 girls; 4-6 years old) with autism who had poor or no vocalization. Intervention: Following baseline, the children were given PECS training and then PECS with imitation training. Measures: Frequency of eye contact, vocalization, and rates of correct PECS responses and imitative behaviors. Results: PECS with imitation training improved eye contact and vocalization for all the participants, and improved imitation for 3 of the 4 participants. Conclusion: The results of the present study suggest that adding imitation training to PECS increased eye contact and vocalization.

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Study objective: Stimulus shaping and the sufficient-response-exemplar method in echoic training were used in an attempt to improve speech intelligibility of a youth with Down syndrome. Design: Multiple probe design. Echoic training was introduced in a sequence, and tests were conducted before and after training on each of 4 target sounds. Setting: Training and tests were conducted in an elementary school computer room. Participant: A fifth-grade male student (10 years 10 months old) with Down syndrome enrolled in a special education class. Intervention: In the training sessions, a teacher said a target word for the participant to repeat; correct pronunciation of the target sound was reinforced with verbal praise. Training began with a single sound and progressed successively with word sets that comprised 2, 3, and 4 sounds. Measure: Percentage of correct pronunciation of the target sounds and words in the training and tests. Results and Conclusion: A combination of stimulus shaping and the sufficient-response-exemplar method was shown to be effective in improving the participant's speech intelligibility; in addition, high ratings were obtained on a social validation questionnaire.

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