Domain Analysis Task Analysis Special Education
It is well known that tasks can be broken down into discrete steps. Furthermore, every task entails a variety of skills involving more than one psychological domain. Any task may be analyzed along the different domains present in the task. We may call this an analysis of the domains. The analysis of one domain will be the primary analysis that an analysis in the other domains will follow. Most often this primary domain will be the motor domain. An analysis of the domains will list the different psychological domains present in the skill being analyzed.
A primary analysis of the skill hand washing might be as follows.
- Walk to sink.
- Turn on water.
- Wet hands.
- Rub soap on hands.
- Rinse soap from hands.
- Turn off water.
- Dry hands.
Thus, the primary analysis can be presented in 7 steps that name the actions performed in the task of washing hands. This is the first level of analysis. This type of analysis is often used in Special Education.
Levels of Analysis
This discussion will only consider an analysis of the primary domain. The first task analysis in the primary domain provides a list of the different steps into which the task has been analyzed. This is the first level of analysis. It describes the actions performed in the execution of the task. Each step of the analysis generally describes one action.
For the second level of analysis, each step of the first level is broken down into a component of the action described in the first level of analysis. Further levels of analysis are performed in this manner until the observable responses described in the primary analysis can be reduced no further into observable responses. This process of analysis will result in one or more levels of analysis. A second level of analysis might be as follows.
1. Walk to sink. a. Approach sink and stop when body touches sink. 2. Turn on water. a. Grasp handle of water faucet. 3. Wet hands. a. Put hands under water flow. 4. Rub soap on hands. a. Place one hand under soap dispenser. 5. 5. Rinse soap from hands. a. Place hands under water flow. 6. Turn water off. a. Grasp handle of water faucet. 7. Dry hands. a. Grasp towel.
In the above outline, the actions labeled as “a” are all of the second level of analysis. Each of these steps is less complex and involves less skill than the step in the first level of analysis to which they correspond. For example, the first step in the first level of analysis is: Walk to sink. The first step in the second level of analysis (the step labeled “a”) is: Approach sink and stop when body touches sink. Developmentally, one learns to stop at objects rather than walking into them. This is an early skill when learning to walk (approximately 18 months to a year). The skill of walking to sink entails this skill. This larger skill of walking to the sink is mastered at approximately 2 years.
First level task steps for steps 4 and 5 involve rubbing soap on hands and rinsing soap from hands. For both steps, the corresponding steps of the second level analysis involve placing hands under soap dispenser and under the water. These two steps of the second level of analysis merely entail eye-hand coordination, a developmentally earlier skill and much less complex than rubbing and rinsing.
The second level task steps for the first-level steps 2, 6, and 7, all involve grasping an object, water faucet handle and a towel. The skill of grasping is also a simpler and developmentally earlier skill than those of turning on water (2), turning off water (6), and drying hands (7).
It is well known that the development of skills follows a sequence. These sequences have been described in research for the different psychological domains. Comparing the developmental sequence with the task analytical sequence reveals a functional relationship between the two sequences. We see that with each level of analysis of the primary domain, the skills described in that level of the analysis are similar to the skills found in a corresponding developmental level.
Developmental Psychological Relationship
This relationship between psychological development and task analysis reveals that a multilevel task analysis possesses developmental structure, like stages of behavioral change. It’s easy to see that this relationship provides a means of anchoring psychological development in the performance structure of specific tasks. Stages of psychological development don’t disappear; they remain part of a developing organism’s performance in the form of observable behavior. For any level of psychological development, we can find where in any task that developmental level functions.
When these levels of task analysis are considered, we find the level of psychological development required by the task. The task can thus be analyzed into two types of sequences. The inter-step sequence and the intra-step sequence. Each task has more than one inter-step sequence, each of which is based on the primary task analysis which is that task analysis that represents the highest level of psychological development required by the task. The intra-step sequences are analyses performed on the steps of the primary task analysis. The steps of each of the intra-step sequences when placed in the order of the primary task analysis form an inter-step analysis for the task that shows the task analyzed at different developmental levels.
Benefits of Intra-Step Analysis
As each step in the primary task analysis is broken down and those steps are then broken down, we are provided a picture of the task at different developmental levels. The ability to express the task performance requirements at different levels of development provides an objective means of identifying pivotal skills. Such skills can be shown as pivotal, not by someone’s theory, but by their occurrence in skills performed in the natural environment by actual people. Instruction can focus on those skills that will facilitate learning, because those skills are the ones that comprise the largest number of actual tasks. These skills will be demanded by the most environments.
By revealing pivotal skills, an intra-step analysis will produce generalization gradients that specify paths of generalization for the development of the skill for specific subjects. By comparing the intra-step analysis of different tasks, we can discover skill similarities between different tasks and provide for a rational and graded extension of a subject’s performance.
The combination of psychological development and task analysis increases the power of each in understanding changes in human behavior at a finer-grained level and facilitate the development of more effective behavior change procedures.