We evaluated the effects of instructive feedback (IF) on the emergence of spoken category names with 2 children who had been diagnosed with autism. IF stimuli were presented during listener discrimination training and consisted of presenting the category name associated with each target stimulus. Results suggest that participants acquired the speaker relations in the absence of prompting and reinforcement. Clinical implications and future research on the use of IF as a teaching procedure for children with autism are discussed.
We evaluated the use of behavioral skills training (BST) to train caregivers to conduct procedures commonly associated with mand training. We trained two caregivers on the following procedures: (a) conducting preference assessments, (b) delivering preferred items contingent on appropriate behavior, (c) capturing and contriving motivating operations, (d) conducting probes to assess the child's current mand repertoire, (e) errorless prompting procedures using echoic prompts, (f) vocal shaping, (g) collecting data, and (h) correcting errors. We also assessed whether a trained caregiver could in turn train their spouse on these procedures. We evaluated the effects of the intervention on the frequency of child spontaneous and prompted mands. The three caregivers performed near zero percent accuracy during baseline but increased to above 80 % accuracy with training, and high performance persisted during most maintenance probes. These results were replicated for the parent who received training from their spouse. In addition, spontaneous mands were occurring more frequently than prompted mands by the end of the study. The implications of caregivers implementing mand training procedures based on Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior are discussed.
Video-based instruction (VBI) has been successfully used to teach skills to individuals with autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disabilities. Recent research efforts have focused on analyzing the components of the VBI intervention package, one of which is voice-over narration. The comparative studies on VBI with and without voice-over narration have produced conflicting results with some participants performing equally in both conditions. A potential reason for these results is a product of the adapted alternating treatments design used in those studies, specifically alternation effects. In the current study, we used a multiple probe design across participants to examine the effects of video prompting without voice-over narration in isolation. Results suggest that the intervention was not effective for 2 of the 3 participants. However, participants' performance increased once voice-over narration was added in a separate phase. These results are discussed along with implications for practice and future research.
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