Increasing Opportunities for Requesting in Children with Developmental Disabilities Residing in Group Homes through Pyramidal Training

his study evaluated the effectiveness of pyramidal training with direct care staff in group homes. Training focused on teaching staff how to provide opportunities for communication to non-speaking children with developmental disabilities to communicate. Staff were taught through a combination of a workshop, and nondirective consultation following an adult education model. A multiple-probe design across three cohorts of direct care staff was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the training in terms of the number of opportunities provided by staff and the percentage of requests emitted by participating children. Results showed that pyramidal training resulted in more opportunities provided to the children and concurrent increases in children's requesting. Results are discussed in terms of the suitability of pyramidal training for group home settings, and implications for future research. © Division on Developmental Disabilities.