Teaching Children with Autism when Reward is Delayed. The Effects of Two Kinds of Marking Stimuli

Abstract

Three children with autism were taught to identify pictures of emotions in response to their spoken names. Their speed of acquisition was compared using a within-child alternating treatments design across three teaching conditions, each involving a 5 second delay to reinforcement. In the marked-before condition, an instruction encouraged the children to visually orient to the cards before they made their choice response; in the marked-after condition, an attention-eliciting verbal cue (e.g., "Look!") was delivered after both correct and incorrect responses; in the delay condition, these marking cues were omitted. Performance in the no-cue control was inferior to both the marked-before and marked-after conditions, but the difference between the latter two conditions was not significant.

“Recalling hidden harms”: autistic experiences of childhood applied behavioural analysis (ABA)

“…One of the core components of behavioural learning and intervention is consistency and repetition (Mohammadzaheri et al , 2014). The method of learning through ABA is built on a teach/reward strategy to adapt to behaviour (Grindle and Remington, 2005). Such approaches were perceived as being Trained Like an Animal to Perform .…”

Reducing attention‐maintained behavior through the use of positive punishment, differential reinforcement of low rates, and response marking

“…Response marking the behavior-instead of ignoring it-can better identify the correct and incorrect behaviors and expectations to access attention for individuals with special needs and challenging behaviors. Response marking enhances the acquisition to discriminate or learn between correct and incorrect responses (Lieberman et al, 1979;Grindle & Remington, 2004;Grindle & Remington, 2005) and is a direct method of providing feedback to desired and undesired behaviors that connects the association with the action and its consequence (Thomas, Lieberman, McIntosh, & Ronaldson, 1983;Grindle & Remington, 2005). Furthermore, response marking may be an effective method when reinforcement is delayed (Grindle & Remington, 2004), such as the delay of earning rewards at the end of the school day, which was part of the present study.…”

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