Deinstitutionalisation has resulted in a growing number of people with intellectual handicaps living in the community. For this reason, it is increasingly important to develop effective training programs to enable them to make use of community facilities, and to avoid being taken advantage of. An important community living skill is the ability to handle money, and this study set out to teach these skills, using computer assisted learning, to five people with mild and moderate intellectual handicaps. Earlier studies have addressed this issue, but have not tested whether the skills so acquired can be applied in real purchasing situations. This study evaluated subjects using a single subject multiple probe design across tasks.

Subjects were taught four tasks using a computer assisted learning system: to give the correct coins for one coin, simple two coin, complex two coin and three coin prices. The system was designed similarly to two previous studies and adopted behavioural and educational instructional techniques to encourage transfer.

Results show that all subjects were able to perform each of these tasks to criterion on the CAL system under three different prompt conditions. The subjects transferred the skills learnt to a simulated transaction, yet were unable to transfer these skills (apart from the one coin problems) consistently to the real world. Two subjects appeared to exhibit partial transfer, yet no conclusive inferences could be made.

This study discusses the reasons for the lack of transfer of money skills to actual purchasing situations, and suggests that future research could look more closely at some of the assumptions of computer assisted learning and explore ways to enhance the generalisability of acquired skills.