Increasing productivity rates in adult mentally retarded clients: the failure of self-monitoring.

A series of three studies investigating procedures to increase productivity rates of mentally retarded adults in a sheltered workshop are reported. In the first study, the use of a behavioral intervention program implemented in a small classroom consisting of prompting, social praise, and performance feedback was found to significantly increase the productivity rates of five mentally retarded adults. Study 2 showed that simply the change in environment from the large, open space workshop setting to the smaller classroom did not contribute significantly to improve production. Despite the gains evident in the first study, production rates were found to decrease to pretreatment levels once the intervention was terminated. Study 3 examined the use of self-monitoring to increase productivity and achieve generalization across settings. Results of that study found self-monitoring to be ineffective. Implications for future research are discussed in light of the failure of self-monitoring with the mentally retarded.