Association for Behavior Analysis International

Physical prompting is often used when teaching children with autism a variety of skills including imitation and self help skills. There have been a very small number of studies which show some physical prompting can be used to develop speech sounds. Despite the relatively small number of studies, there are a growing number of people implementing these physical prompts. We will discuss the limited research, present video case studies from the authors' practice, along with a small study and discuss the urgent need for more research in this area.

In its diagnostic criteria for social communication disorder, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - Fifth Edition lists an �impairment in the ability to change communication to match context or the needs of the listener.� This impairment often manifests in inappropriate speaking volume that inhibits the speaker from fully participating in a given environment. For any practitioner treating individuals with autism, a variety of techniques are often needed to address both inappropriately quiet and loud speech. As volume is an abstract concept, children with autism may require multi-modal prompts and cues to achieve and maintain an appropriate speaking volume. Physical prompting strategies, tactile cues, and low-tech and high-tech visual cues will be presented with case study examples.

The present study provides a systematic replication of the Jennett, Harris, and Delmolino (2008) study comparing discrete trial instruction (DTI) and naturalistic mand training on the acquisition of mands for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). An adapted alternating treatment design was implemented across three participants. Independent mands, variation in requested items, and duration of sessions were assessed across conditions. Generalization probes were conducted to assess generalization across communication partners (e.g., novel research assistants), along with a maintenance probe one-week post-training. Furthermore, a concurrent-chains arrangement was implemented to assess participants preference for teaching strategies. All participants reached mastery criterion quickest with naturalistic mand training. Implications, limitations, and areas of future research are discussed.

There is a wealth of information indicating that an individuals preferences for stimuli are highly individualized (Zhou, Iwata, Goff, & Shore, 2001). This logic should then be applied to peoples preference for the type of praise she or he receives when learning. The purpose of this study was to explore childrens preference for descriptive or generic praise. There were 3 children with Autism Spectrum Disorder who participated. This study conducted two phases: skill acquisition and preference evaluation. In the skill acquisition phase, intraverbals were taught to each participant in an alternating treatment embedded within a multiple baseline design. The results of this phase indicated that neither type of praise was consistently better in establishing new intraverbals. In the preference evaluation, results indicated that 1 participant displayed a strong preference for descriptive praise while the other 2 did not display a preference for either type of praise. These results add to the growing body of literature that the type of praise used, does not necessarily increase the speed of acquisition. Second, the children in this study demonstrated that their preference for the type of praise was highly individualized.