Teaching Skill Acquisition to Individuals with Blindness: A Systematic Review of Response-Prompting Procedures

A search of the literature on prompting procedures to teach skill acquisition yielded 22 single-subject studies that included participants with little to no functional vision. Studies were published between 1984 and 2012 in 13 different journals. Quality indicators for single-subject research (Homer et al., 2005) were applied to identify studies that met high quality standards. Findings from high-quality studies were aggregated to determine if prompting could be considered an evidence-based practice (EBP) for this population. Across the 12 studies meeting high quality standards, 8 different research groups taught 35 different behaviors to 27 participants. Behaviors included chained and discrete skills across domains of communication, motor skills, self-care, vocational/leisure, and community/living. System of least prompts was used most frequently with several procedural variations. Research supports the conclusion that prompting is an evidence-based practice to teach new skills to learners with blindness.