TEACHING AUTISTIC CHILDREN CONVERSATIONAL SPEECH USING VIDEO MODELING

We assessed the effects of video modeling on acquisition and generalization of conversational skills among autistic children. Three autistic boys observed videotaped conversations consisting of two people discussing specific toys. When criterion for learning was met, generalization of conversational skills was assessed with untrained topics of conversation; new stimuli (toys); unfamiliar persons, siblings, and autistic peers; and other settings. The results indicated that the children learned through video modeling, generalized their conversational skills, and maintained conversational speech over a 15-month period. Video modeling shows much promise as a rapid and effective procedure for teaching complex verbal skills such as conversational speech.     

THE EFFECTS OF DIFFERENTIAL REINFORCEMENT OF UNPROMPTED RESPONDING ON THE SKILL ACQUISITION OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

The recommendation to reserve the most potent reinforcers for unprompted responses during acquisition programming has little published empirical support for its purported benefits (e.g., rapid acquisition, decreased errors, and decreased prompt dependence). The purpose of the current investigation was to compare the delivery of high‐quality reinforcers exclusively following unprompted responses (differential reinforcement) with the delivery of high‐quality reinforcers following both prompted and unprompted responses (nondifferential reinforcement) on the skill acquisition of 2 children with autism. Results indicated that both were effective teaching procedures, although the differential reinforcement procedure was more reliable in producing skill acquisition. These preliminary findings suggest that the differential reinforcement of unprompted responses may be the most appropriate default approach to teaching children with autism.     

ESTABLISHING DERIVED TEXTUAL CONTROL IN ACTIVITY SCHEDULES WITH CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

Activity schedules are often used to facilitate task engagement and transition for children with autism. This study evaluated whether conditional discrimination training would serve to transfer the control from activity‐schedule pictures to printed words (i.e., derived textual control). Two preschoolers with autism were taught to select pictures and printed words given their dictated names. Following training, participants could respond to printed words by completing the depicted task, match printed words to pictures, and read printed words without explicit training (i.e., emergent relations).     

EVALUATING PROGRESS IN BEHAVIORAL PROGRAMS FOR CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDERS VIA CONTINUOUS AND DISCONTINUOUS MEASUREMENT

We evaluated the influence of two different frequencies of data collection on skill acquisition and maintenance within behavioral treatment programs for children with autism spectrum disorders. Six children were taught multiple skills in up to four different behavioral programs. Half of the skills were measured continuously (i.e., trial by trial), and the other half were measured discontinuously (i.e., first trial only). When differences were detected, quicker acquisition was typically associated with discontinuous measurement, and stronger maintenance was typically associated with continuous measurement.     

EFFECTS OF VIDEO MODELING ON TEACHING BIDS FOR JOINT ATTENTION TO CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of video modeling to teach children with autism to initiate bids for joint attention. The video model consisted of a child demonstrating three components of a bid for joint attention with an adult conversational partner: orienting toward the object, emitting a vocal statement, and eye gaze shift toward unique objects in the environment. Results indicated that video modeling alone was effective in teaching all components of joint attention for two of the three children, whereas video modeling plus in vivo prompting was effective for the third participant. Further, bids for joint attention did not generalize across novel items for any of the participants. Results are discussed in terms of the social relevance and validity of the use of video modeling to teach a complex social behavior such as bids for joint attention. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

USE OF CHAINING TO INCREASE COMPLEXITY OF ECHOICS IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

Echoics are a critical target of language intervention for children with autism, because a well‐established echoic repertoire on the part of the child allows the clinician to use vocal modeling as a flexible, low‐effort prompting procedure during teaching. In this study, we implemented a chaining procedure to increase the complexity of echoics in 2 children with autism and 1 child with developmental delay. The procedure was effective for all 3 participants, and gains were maintained after treatment was withdrawn in most cases.     

VIDEO MODELING BY EXPERTS WITH VIDEO FEEDBACK TO ENHANCE GYMNASTICS SKILLS

The effects of combining video modeling by experts with video feedback were analyzed with 4 female competitive gymnasts (7 to 10 years old) in a multiple baseline design across behaviors. During the intervention, after the gymnast performed a specific gymnastics skill, she viewed a video segment showing an expert gymnast performing the same skill and then viewed a video replay of her own performance of the skill. The results showed that all gymnasts demonstrated improved performance across three gymnastics skills following exposure to the intervention.     

USING A BLOCKED-TRIALS PROCEDURE TO TEACH IDENTITY MATCHING TO A CHILD WITH AUTISM

Children with autism may struggle in developing conditional discrimination repertoires. Saunders and Spradlin (1989 , 1990 , 1993 ) arranged “blocked” teaching trials in which they presented the same sample stimulus repeatedly across trials (in lieu of randomly alternating targets across trials) and then faded the number of trials in each block. We replicated the effects of this blocked‐trials procedure in teaching identity matching to a child with autism and evaluated the necessity of fading. Arranging blocked trials facilitated the acquisition of identity matching, but fading the block size was not necessary to maintain discriminated performance.     

A COMPARISON OF DIFFERENTIAL REINFORCEMENT AND NONCONTINGENT REINFORCEMENT TO TREAT FOOD SELECTIVITY IN A CHILD WITH AUTISM

We compared differential reinforcement plus escape extinction to noncontingent reinforcement plus escape extinction to treat food selectivity exhibited by a young child with autism. The interventions were equally effective for increasing bite acceptance and decreasing problem behaviors. However, a social validity measure suggested that noncontingent reinforcement was preferred by the child's caregiver.     

TEACHING CHILDREN WITH AUTISM TO SEEK INFORMATION-ACQUISITION OF NOVEL INFORMATION AND GENERALIZATION OF RESPONDING

A time delay procedure was used to teach 3 children with autism to ask the question “What's that?” when novel stimuli were presented during an instructional task. Once the ability to ask the question was acquired, the children's ability to learn novel information by asking the question was assessed. The children were then taught to ask the question within a less structured context. All three studies used a multiple baseline across participants. Generalization was assessed in a different room, to a new person, and to novel stimuli. All of the children learned to ask the question within the instructional context, while on a walk in the school building, and to request information about three-dimensional objects. The acquisition of novel information was consistent for receptive and expressive tests for 2 of the children, with varied results for the 3rd. These studies indicate that children with autism can be taught to ask questions that lead to the acquisition of new information.     

PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IN HOMES 13 TEACHING EMPATHY SKILLS TO CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

The purpose of this study was to teach empathetic responding to 4 children with autism. Instructors presented vignettes with dolls and puppets demonstrating various types of affect and used prompt delay, modeling, manual prompts, behavioral rehearsals, and reinforcement to teach participants to perform empathy responses. Increases in empathetic responding occurred systematically with the introduction of treatment across all participants and response categories. Furthermore, responding generalized from training to nontraining probe stimuli for all participants. Generalization occurred from dolls and puppets to actual people in a nontraining setting for 2 participants. Generalization was observed initially to the nontraining people and setting for the other participants, but responding subsequently decreased to baseline levels. Introduction of treatment in this setting produced rapid acquisition of target skills.     

TEACHING SOCIAL SKILLS TO STUDENTS WITH AUTISM TO INCREASE PEER INTERACTIONS IN AN INTEGRATED FIRST-GRADE CLASSROOM

We investigated the use of social skills groups to facilitate increased social interactions for students with autism and their nonhandicapped peers in an integrated first-grade classroom. Social skills groups consisted of training students and peers in initiating, responding, and keeping interactions going; greeting others and conversing on a variety of topics; giving and accepting compliments; taking turns and sharing; asking for help and helping others; and including others in activities. Training occurred during the first 10 min of 20-min play groups, four times per week. Using a multiple baseline across subjects design, results demonstrated increases in the frequency of, time engaged in, and duration of social interactions, as well as the responsivity of students and peers to each other. Results were maintained when students were monitored and given feedback on social performance in play groups and during follow-up.     

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A CONSTANT TIME-DELAY PROCEDURE TO TEACH CHAINED RESPONSES TO ADOLESCENTS WITH MENTAL RETARDATION

The effectiveness of a 5-s constant time-delay procedure to teach three chained food preparation behaviors to four moderately retarded adolescent students was evaluated within a multiple probe design across behaviors. Results indicate that the procedure was effective in teaching all four students to make a sandwich, boil a boil-in-bag item, and bake canned biscuits. The skills maintained with at least 85% accuracy over a 3-month period. Training generalized from the school to the home setting for the 2 subjects that completed generalization probe sessions. The percentage of errors across all skills and students was less than 9%.     

INCREASING OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISM: A PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS

We evaluated the effects of monitoring responses on the acquisition of sight words with 3 children with autism. In the training condition, we taught participants a vocal imitation and matching response related to a peer's reading response. In another condition, participants were exposed only to a peer's reading responses. Participants read the words more accurately during test sessions when the monitoring response was required. Results and discussion highlight the importance of identifying component responses of observational learning and the need for additional research in this area.     

TEACHING RECEPTIVE NAMING OF CHINESE CHARACTERS TO CHILDREN WITH AUTISM BY INCORPORATING ECHOLALIA

The facilitative effect of incorporating echolalia on teaching receptive naming of Chinese characters to children with autism was assessed. In Experiment 1, echoing the requested character name prior to the receptive naming task facilitated matching a character to its name. In addition, task performance was consistently maintained only when echolalia preceded the receptive manual response. Positive results from generalization tests suggested that learned responses occurred across various novel conditions. In Experiment 2, we examined the relation between task difficulty and speed of acquisition. All 3 participants achieved 100% correct responding in training, but learning less discriminable characters took more trials than learning more discriminable characters. These results provide support for incorporating echolalia as an educational tool within language instruction for some children with autism.     

IMPROVING SOCIAL SKILLS AND DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISM THROUGH SELF-MANAGEMENT

The literature suggests that children with autism typically are unresponsive to verbal initiations from others in community settings, and that such unresponsiveness can lead to problematic social interactions and severely disruptive behavior. The present study assessed whether self-management could be used as a technique to produce extended improvements in responsiveness to verbal initiations from others in community, home, and school settings without the presence of a treatment provider. The results showed that children with autism who displayed severe deficits in social skills could learn to self-manage responsivity to others in multiple community settings, and that such improvements were associated with concomitant reductions in disruptive behavior without the need for special intervention. The results are discussed in terms of their significance for improved development of social skills in children with autism.     

EMERGENCE OF TACTS FOLLOWING MAND TRAINING IN YOUNG CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

This study sought to examine the effects of training mands on the emergence of tacts with the same response forms. Results indicated that training adjective sets as mands resulted in the emergence of adjective sets as tacts under modified, but not standard, antecedent conditions. The findings suggested that the apparent functional independence of mands and tacts may be explained by a lack of appropriate antecedent control over responding.