Effectiveness of Teaching Naming Facial Expression to Children with Autism Via Video Modeling

Abstract

This study aims to examine the effectiveness of teaching naming emotional facial expression via video modeling to children with autism. Teaching the naming of emotions (happy, sad, scared, disgusted, surprised, feeling physical pain, and bored) was made by creating situations that lead to the emergence of facial expressions to children participating in the study. A multiple probe design with probe trails across behaviors was used and replicated across subjects. Four subjects diagnosed with autism (ages 4,5, and 6) participated in the study. Ten people participated in the research study: eight people for the video modeling display and two for displaying the emotional facial expressions in the teaching and generalization sessions. The findings of the study show that teaching the naming of emotional facial expressions to children with autism is effective, and after the end of training the children can still maintain this ability. In addition, subjects can generalize their acquired skills from a variety of simulation situations created by different materials in different environments, both with persons who participated in this model and those who did not. Social validity findings show that the children's mothers and teachers and post-graduate students have positive opinions about the study.

Tact instruction for children with autism spectrum disorder: A review

“…However, in the natural environment, reinforcement may be limited to the naturally occurring social reinforcement from the listener. If primary reinforcers are used, pairing them with social reinforcement in the beginning of a tact intervention while fading out the primary reinforcement (e. g., Akmanoglu, 2015) may increase the likelihood that social attention and praise will function as a reinforcer in the natural environment (LeBlanc et al, 2009). Another approach may be using social reinforcement such as verbal praise or interaction (e.g., hugs) for correct responding whilst also using putative reinforcers (e.g., tokens) for attending throughout the intervention.…”

“…However, 11.76% (n ¼ 6) used videos and videos with pictures to teach target tacts. The videos included human enactments of emotions and facial expressions (e.g., Akmanoglu, 2015); puppet enactments of emotion (e.g., McHugh et al, 2011); actions (Schebell et al, 2018); and animation or cartoons (e.g., Naoi et al, 2007;Simpson & Keen, 2010). Lorah and Parnell's (2017) study that involved a teacher-led reading-circle in a preschool classroom used a common story book and taught tact responding to characters depicted in the book.…”

“…Most of the 17 studies used social interaction to reinforce tacting but two studies paired social interaction and tangible reinforcers and later faded out the tangible reinforcer. Akmanoglu (2015) paired preferred edibles with verbal praise and later faded out the edibles after a participant had a session with 100% accurate answers during the intervention phase. And Marchese et al (2012) paired an unrelated preferred item with verbal praise in their comparison of tact procedures.…”

“…Intervention methods that were used by more than one study included in the current review were variations of multiple-exemplar instruction (n ¼ 4; e.g., Byrne et al, 2014;McHugh et al, 2011); intensive tact instruction (n ¼ 4; e.g., Greenberg et al, 2014;Pistoljevic & Greer, 2006); and matrix training (n ¼ 3, e.g., Frampton et al, 2019). Some other interventions that were used by single studies included comparing different prompting methods (e.g., standard versus intraverbal prompts; Sundberg et al, 2000); comparing different stimulus presentations (e.g., isolated versus compound stimuli; Hanney et al, 2019); using mixed verbal operant instruction (e.g., tact versus tact with echoic; Kodak and Clements, 2009); video modeling (e.g., Akmanoglu, 2015); total communication training (Carbone et al, 2006); PECS (e.g., Conallen & Reed, 2017); observational learning based on PEAK training methods (e.g., Dixon et al, 2017); behavioral momentum (Kelly & Holloway, 2015); and sign exposure (Valentino & Shillingsburg, 2011).…”

“…Researchers have stated the importance of using a variety of stimuli and presentation to enhance transfer of tacts from the pictures to a real event or object (see Schnell et al, 2018). Thus, some studies included in this review used multiple-exemplar training when they used pictures (e.g., McHugh et al, 2011) and other studies presented two-dimensional pictures or videos but included post-intervention generalization probes that used live-action stimuli (e.g., Akmanoglu. 2015;Schebell et al, 2018).…”