Evaluation of a Personal Digital Assistant as a Self-Prompting Device for Increasing Multi-Step Task Completion by Students with Moderate Intellectual Disabilities

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the use of a personal digital assistant (PDA), with picture, auditory, and video prompts, would serve as a portable self-prompting device to facilitate independent task performance by high school age students with moderate intellectual disabilities. A multiple probe design was used across three cooking recipes and replicated across three students to evaluate the effectiveness of the self-prompting program. Results indicate that students were able to independently use a PDA to self-prompt completion of the three cooking recipes without the need for external adult prompting, to maintain use of the device over time, and to self-adjust the levels of prompts used within and across recipes.