A study involving three profoundly retarded adults was designed to investigate the efficacy of a stair step diagonal training progression in promoting correct responses to untrained action-object verbal instructions. Procedures included pretraining assessment of action verbs and nouns, matrix training in which each S was physically put through the process of grasping the correct object and making the correct motor response, and generalization probes. In each case, the stair step matrix training procedures were sufficient to promote the performance of recombined action-object verbal instructions in Ss. Figures are included which offer statistical data. (SB)