The use of video self-modelling and feedback to teach cooking skills to individuals with traumatic brain injury: A pilot study

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of video self-modelling plus prompting and feedback to teach a cooking skill to people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and to examine skill generalization to a novel food item. Research design: Multiple probe across participants. Methods and procedures: Four individuals with TBI received instruction in cooking. They watched videotapes of themselves cooking and practiced that skill while receiving prompts and feedback. Treatment effects were evaluated by comparing performance before, during and after training and at a 2 and 4 week follow-up. Additionally, cooking performance on a novel food item was examined. Main outcomes and results: Three of the four individuals achieved criterion performance within four training sessions. Those individuals also substantially maintained their skills 2 and 4 weeks following training and generalized their skills to a novel food item. Conclusions: Video self-modelling plus prompting and feedback appears to be an effective treatment for teaching simple cooking skills to individuals with TBI. Further research should examine whether the video alone is sufficient for skill acquisition and evaluate the effectiveness of video self-modelling to teach other skills.