Teaching instruction following to severely retarded youth: The establishment of eye contact

A series of case studies and a controlled experiment are reported which are concerned with establishing eye contact vithin an instruction following framework to severely retarded youth. The case studies demonstrated that eye contact can be developed successfully in these people. The results of the second study showed that the contingent use of reinforcement was primarily responsible for the eye contact performance of the participants, and that each participant’s high level responding vas maintained at the 10 week follow-up evaluation. The implications of the findings are discussed.