Abstract:
Individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) often have deficits in social communication
skills, such as initiating a conversation with others appropriately. These deficits tend to have
negative impacts on their wellbeing and quality of life, including social participation and
employment. Numerous behavioural interventions have been employed to remediate social
communication deficits in people with ID, such as behavioural skills training (BST) and
remote audio coaching (RAC). The current research aimed to use BST and RAC remotely via
Zoom to teach an appropriate conversation-initiating skill to four adult participants with ID
who worked in a café. A non-concurrent multiple baseline across participants design was
used to evaluate the effects of BST and RAC on participants’ conversation-initiating
behaviour. Participants were allocated to either the BST or RAC intervention group using
randomisation, or based on their preferences, to compare these two interventions to determine
which led to better outcomes. Results indicate that RAC led to substantial improvements in
appropriate conversation initiations in one of the two participants in the RAC intervention
group and the improvements were maintained for 4 weeks upon the removal of RAC. In
contrast, BST led to some improvements in appropriate conversation initiations in one of the
two participants in the BST intervention group. The improvements became more significant
after introducing an additional procedure, error correction (providing corrective feedback
following incorrect responses), than those resulting from BST alone. Neither RAC nor BST
resulted in skill generalisation across individuals in the natural vocational setting (the café).
Potential limitations involved in this research and relevant implications are specified and
directions for future research are discussed.