Teaching Children with Autism to Understand Metaphors

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of an instructional procedure on the acquisition and generalization of metaphorical understanding for children with autism spectrum disorder. Three students (two boys, one girl, 5-8 years old) participated but only two completed the study. A multiple-probe design across two behaviors and three participants was used. The metaphors were categorized by topography: metaphors involving physical features and metaphors involving abstract properties. The instruction consisted of intraverbal training using echoic prompts, picture prompts, and textual prompts. The results indicated that the instruction was effective in establishing metaphorical understanding of target metaphors. Generalized understanding to untaught metaphors occurred for the two students who completed the study, and all metaphors were maintained at a relatively high level for two months following the instruction.

A Systematic Review of Derived Relational Responding Beyond Coordination in Individuals with Autism and Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

“…Other teaching procedures used less frequently in the current review, but with positive results on derived relational responding, include a tabletop version of the TARPA (Gale & Stewart, 2020), intraverbal training (Lee et al, 2019), match-tosample and conditional discrimination training (Murphy & Barnes-Holmes, 2010), and a combination intervention of observation and discrimination training (Molina-Cobos & Amador-Castro, 2010, experiment two). The use of term 'observation' rather than 'observational learning' to describe this final intervention procedure is deliberate, as observational learning is characterized by observation of a modeled response and a subsequent consequence (Masia & Chase, 1997).…”

“…The absence of this data raises the question of whether interventions designed to facilitate derived relational responding have similar efficacy across racial and ethnic groups. Similarly, of the 30 studies, Lee et al (2019) was the only one to clearly state participants' native language, despite several other studies being conducted internationally and in non-English speaking countries. In order to function as communication between speaker and listener, language requires context which includes cultural background knowledge, among other factors (Garten et al, 2019).…”

“…While 89.5% of the included studies took place in participants' natural environments (e.g., school, home, etc. ), Lee et al (2019) was the only study to directly measure social validity. Participants' parents filled out a questionnaire, and investigators interviewed the participants and their teachers (who were not aware of the research) to determine whether the intervention in metaphor comprehension facilitated improvements in communication, social, or reading comprehension skills in the classroom environment.…”

Devising Trainings to Enhance the Capabilities of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder to Cope With Metaphor: A Review of the Literature

“…The behavioral-analytic strand is emblematically represented by Persicke et al's (2012) study, and more recently, by Lee et al (2019). The authors' position fundamentally adopt Skinner's (1957) general view about language, defined as "verbal behavior", and metaphor is conceptualized as a type of "extended tact".…”

“…It must be noted that the very conception of possible treatments is recent, which explains that the literature on the implementation of those trainings is limited to a few number of cases, to the best of our knowledge. As pointed out by Lee et al (2019) the studies in the field can be classified into two major strands of thought: behavioral-analytic and psycholinguistic, respectively.…”