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| Comparing Methods to Improve the Tact Repertoire in Children with Autism |
| Monday, May 29, 2006 |
| 3:00 PM–4:20 PM |
| Centennial Ballroom III |
| Area: AUT; Domain: Service Delivery |
| Chair: Kelle Wood Rich (Central Texas Autism Center, Inc.) |
| Discussant: Kelle Wood Rich (Central Texas Autism Center, Inc.) |
| CE Instructor: Kelle Wood Rich, M.Ed. |
| Abstract: These studies compared relative effectiveness of procedures to improve the tact repertoire in children with autism. The first study compared the Effects of Mimetic-Tact versus Intraverbal-Tact training on the Acquisition of Sign Tacts in a Child with Autism. Similar to results obtained by Partington, Sundberg, Newhouse, & Spengler (1994), the subject acquired 14 tacts via intraverbal-tact transfer while acquiring 2 via mimetic-tact transfer demonstrating the superiority of intraverbal-tact transfer. The second study, a Comparison of Two Procedures for Teaching the Tact Repertoire in Children with Autism compared the relative effectiveness of repeated set prompting versus errorless teaching of individual items on rate of acquisition of tacts. Results revealed superior improvement in rate of acquisition in the repeated set prompting group and improved retention and application. The last study, the Effect of Tutor Modeled Successive Approximations Versus Tutor Modeled Adult Forms to Improve Topography of Tacts, extended the findings of Kasper and Godwin, 2003 and Carbone, 2005 from the echoic repertoire to the tact repertoire. Tutor-modeled successive approximations were used to improve topography of the vocal tact in a child with poor articulation. Use of tutor-modeled approximations resulted in improved articulation of tacts compared to other methods. |
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| Effects of Mimetic-Tact versus Intraverbal-Tact training on the Acquisition of Tacts in a Child with Autism. |
| TAMARA S. KASPER (CCC-SLP/BCABA), Jennifer R. Godwin (Early Autism Project, Inc.) |
| Abstract: Development of verbal repertoires in children with autism and limited vocal repertoires is the focus of many intensive behavior programs. For children who are non-verbal, manual sign language has been encouraged as an effective response form (Carr, 1979; Fulwiler & Fouts, 1976, Brady & Smouse, 1992; Layton, 1988). Many have examined procedures to facilitate the tacting repertoire. Carroll & Hesse (1987) and Arntzen & Almas (2002) examined the effects of mand-tact and tact-only training procedures on the acquisition of tact performance and demonstrated that fewer trials were needed to learn tacts in the mand-tact condition. Partington, Sundberg, Newhouse, & Spengler (1994) used procedures to transfer stimulus control from verbal to nonverbal stimuli in a subject who has an established mand repertoire and the subject was able to quickly acquire a total of 18 tacts. The current study extends these findings. The subject acquired 14 tacts via intraverbal-tact transfer while acquiring 2 via mimetic-tact transfer demonstrating the superiority of intraverbal-tact transfer compared to mimetic-tact transfer or no training for a child with autism who possessed an imitative repertoire but experienced difficult acquiring tacts. |
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| Comparison of Two Procedures for Teaching the Tact Repertoire in Children with Autism. |
| ANGIE B. KEITH (Early Autism Project, Inc.) |
| Abstract: This study compared the relative effectiveness of repeated set prompting versus errorless teaching of individual items on rate of acquisition of tacts in children who demonstrated slow acquisition rates of tacts. Repeated set prompting involved echoic prompting for each member of a target set of tacts with systematic probes and mastery criteria for the entire set. The Individual item condition consisted of training individual tacts via errorless teaching with systematic structure fade and time delay fading (Touchette and Howard, 1984) with mastery criteria for individual tacts. Comparison of results of the two independent variables to a no treatment group revealed gains with both methodologies, but superior improvement in rate of acquisition in the repeated set prompting group. In addition, improved retention and application were demonstrated for items acquired via repeated set prompting which may be related to three learning outcomes associated with automatic, or fluent behavior: retention, endurance, and application (Binder, 1993, 1996). |
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| Effect of Tutor Modeled Successive Approximations versus Tutor Modeled Adult Forms to Improve Topography of Tacts. |
| ANN D. ELDRIDGE (Early Autism Project, Inc.) |
| Abstract: Improving speech intelligibility is often an important component of home treatment programs for children with autism. Kasper and Godwin (2003) explored the effectiveness of use of tutor-modeled successive approximations to target words (based on the work of Nancy Kaufman 1998, 2001) to improve speech intelligibility in a child with autism. Results revealed significant improvement in intelligibility across the verbal operants and response class generalization to non-target words in one child with autism and apraxia of speech. Carbone (2005) compared the relative effectiveness of tutor-modeled approximations to tutor-modeled adult forms and demonstrated superiority of the approximations (Kaufman, 1998, 2001) in terms of rate of acquisition and articulatory precision for three children with autism. The current study extends these finding to the tact repertoire in which tutor-modeled successive approximations were used to improve topography of the vocal tact in a child with adequate stimulus control for tacting, but poor topography. Results were compared to tutor modeled adult forms and no treatment conditions. Use of tutor-modeled approximations resulted in improved articulation of tacts for the subject studied compared to other methods. |
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