Team sports for the severely retarded: training a side-of-the-foot soccer pass using a maximum-to-minimum prompt reduction strategy.

A program to teach three severely retarded adults to use a side-of-the-foot soccer pass was evaluated. A 9-step stimulus-response chain was taught using forward chaining. In contrast to usual practice, intensive physical prompts were provided initially to teach each response component, then systematically faded. Approximately 20 lessons (trials) were presented in 20-min sessions. A multiple baseline across subjects design showed that the three trainees achieved the no-prompt criterion after 24, 29, and 22 sessions, respectively. Subanalyses indicated that successive response components were learned only after training was implemented. Follow-up data were obtained 57 and 276 days later in the training room and in a gymnasium; in both settings, criterion was achieved with fewer than three reinstructions.