Use of pictorial stimuli for training cooking skills in adults with severe disabilities

Adults with disabilities have traditionally performed meaningless tasks repeatedly, such as stringing beads or putting pegs in pegboards. Current best practices require professionals to train individuals with disabilities to become more independent in all aspects of daily living. They should participate in activities that are performed on a regular basis by nondisabled individuals of the same age.Since individuals with severe disabilities may lack many of the required prerequisite skills for performing daily living skills, adaptations and alternative performance strategies can be implemented to compensate for skill deficits. One alternative performance strategy is using picture recipes rather than traditional written recipes for individuals who lack reading skills.In the current study, each subject prepared two food items using a picture recipe and two food items without pictures. Subjects were randomly assigned to prepare four separate food items in different orders. The food items and the treatments were counterbalanced across subjects. This demonstrated that changes in behavior occurred with changes in treatment and not as a function of the preparation of a particular food item.The subjects were eight adults with severe disabilities who live in a large intermediate care facility for the mentally retarded. A pretest was administered to assure that subjects had the vision, mobility, dexterity, and matching skills required for the study. Neither reading skills nor number recognition was required for participation.The primary intent of the current study was to examine the relationship between cooking with pictures and cooking without pictures. The results show that adults with severe disabilities can be more independent in cooking when using picture recipes than when not using pictures.Of secondary interest was the generalization of skills from one cooking task to another. The experiment did not show that acquisition scores were consistently higher for the second food item prepared with pictures than for the first. Additionally, generalization was not shown from one food item prepared without pictures to another food item prepared without pictures.Department of Special EducationThesis (D. Ed.