Acquisition, generalization and maintenance of grocery shopping skills by severely mentally retarded adolescents.

A program designed to teach severely mentally retarded adolescents grocery shopping skills was evaluated. A multiple-probe design was used to assess the training program which was systematically introduced across four participants. To determine the minimally sufficient conditions for generating shopping skills, store probes were interpolated between successive presentations of three more involved shopping skill training procedures (verbal instruction, role play, and in vivo.). A mnemonic training procedure and a simplified monetary transaction component were employed to obviate the participants' deficient reading and math skills. The results indicated that all participants acquired grocery shopping skills, that the acquired skills were maintained for at least five months, and that only a modest decrement in performance was obtained on generalization probes in two novel grocery stores. Additionally, the results suggested that role play training contributed most significantly to the acquisition of shopping skills and that in vivo training was not required to teach this community living skill.