Attending
Contents
- Differential Reinforcement of Unprompted Eye Contact
- Increasing Functional Eye Contact Using a SHaping Procedure Before Instruction
- The Effects of Establishing Instructions as Reinforcers on Academic Performance
- Effects of an Embedded Prompt on Attending and Discrimination in Children with Autism
Differential Reinforcement of Unprompted Eye Contact
Chris Escobar (2013)
Abstract
Eye contact is a skill necessary for all aspects of life and is crucial to the proper development of a person. The diagnosis of autism entails social deficits such as a lack of eye contact; this problem is compounded over time because without eye contact progressive skills, such as joint attention, cannot be attained. The purpose of this study is to increase eye contact by using a shaping procedure with children diagnosed with autism in a special education setting. Eye contact is considered to be a facilitator, if not a prerequisite, to instruction (Carolynn C. Hamlet, Saul Axelrod, and Steven Kuerschner, 1984) and the acquisition of this skill is paramount to academic and nonacademic success. A multiple baseline across participants will be used in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the unprompted shaping procedure. This study could potentially become part of the regular curriculum for the Early Childhood Developmental Delay classroom at WoodsEdge Learning Center, and has the possibility of helping all future students who enter the classroom.
Keywords
differential reinforcement, eye contact, spontaneous, autism, early intervention
Materials
Increasing Functional Eye Contact Using a Shaping Procedure Before Instruction
Kara Jokela
Abstract
Attending is a frequent deficit in children with autism. Attending before instruction helps increase the likelihood of a correct response. A common characteristic of attending is eye contact. Eye contact is also a crucial component of communication. The goal of the current study is to have eye contact function as a discriminative stimulus for the next instruction as a form of communication. A common form of teaching eye contact to children with autism is through prompting methods such as, a pinch where the child tracks the object to the tutors eyes, and slowly fade out the pinch. In this study eye contact will be acquired solely through time delays without prompting. The author intends to present a method of requiring eye contact before an instruction is given.
The Effects of Establishing Instructions as Reinforcers on Academic Performance
Katie Ouellette
Project Description
The purpose of my autism project is to examine the effects of pairing instructions from the verbal directions procedure with reinforcers. The participant in my study was chosen because he had successfully completed the auditory discrimination task on the Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities (ABLA), but has performed below mastery criteria on the verbal directions procedure and has been on the last phase of the procedure for more than twenty consecutive sessions. The auditory discrimination task on the ABLA required him to place a piece of foam into a yellow can after the experimenter said “yellow can” in a low-pitched, drawn-out manner or in a red box after the experimenter said “red box” in a high-pitched, quick manner. To master the task, the child must complete eight consecutive correct responses before accumulating eight errors (Martin, Thorsteinsson, Yu, Martin, & Vause, 2008). The subject’s ability to complete the auditory discrimination task indicates that failure to master the verbal directions procedure is a motivation or attending issue rather than a skill deficit.
To increase attending and motivation on the verbal directions task, my project involves a noncontingent pairing of instructions with reinforcers identified by using a paired stimulus preference assessment (Fisher et al., 1992). Throughout pairing, participants can immediately earn a reinforcer by completing the direction specified in the instruction. There are also testing trials interspersed throughout the pairing process in which the participant is required to complete the action before receiving a reinforcer. By pairing the instructions with reinforcers, the goal is to increase the reinforcing value of those instructions, thereby increasing participants’ attending to those instructions. If the instructions do come to function as reinforcers, correct responding when no reinforcers except the instructions are given should increase.
Effects of an Embedded Prompt on Attending and Discrimination in Children with Autism
Roxy Gayle (2014)
Abstract
Matching-to-sample is a skill that generally needs to be acquired early on in discrete trial training curriculum in order for children to learn more complex discrimination skills and progress to other educational goals (Fisher, Kodak, & Moore, 2007Fisher, 2007). When a child makes an incorrect response during a matching-to-sample procedure, most commonly least-to-most prompting (e.g. progressing from modeling the response to physically prompting) is used until the target response occurs (Fisher, 2007). The problem is that prompting may not require the individual to attend or discriminate between the stimuli and/or may cause prompt dependence. The purpose of this study was to assess the effect on correctness of responding during a matching-to-sample task by increasing attending to stimuli in children diagnosed with autism. An observing response (DORs) was used to prompt participants to make discriminated responses between three stimuli while making a match-to-sample response. The child was required to touch the sample stimulus and corresponding comparison stimuli before the opportunity to respond independently was presented. Using an AB design, trials to mastery criterion (three consecutive sessions of 80% or better) were assessed. This intervention may provide the behavior analysis community with more evidence and support on observing responses to promote discrimination and attending to stimuli when teaching matching procedures.