| People with developmental disabilities residing in community programs often have limited opportunities for meaningful social interactions with other people, whether these interactions involve phone calls, mail, visits to or from others, or outings in the community with others. This is especially true of opportunities of social interactions between people with developmental disabilities and people without developmental disabilities residing in the community. In the current investigation, there were three purposes: (1) to teach people with developmental disabilities how to send and receive email as a form of social interaction; (2) to evaluate whether the use of email was maintained after teaching was completed; and (3) to assess the effects of teaching the use of email on the people's overall amount of social interaction. Three participants with varying developmental disabilities learned to use email independently, and all maintained independent use of email over time. Further, teaching participants to use email increased overall average weekly social interactions for all three participants. |
