Increasing Spontaneous Language in Three Autistic Children

Abstract

A time delay procedure was used to increase spontaneous verbalizations of 3 autistic children. Multiple baseline across behaviors designs were used with target responses, selected via a social validation procedure, of two spontaneous responses ("please" and "thank you") and one verbally prompted response ("you're welcome"). The results indicate gains across target behaviors for all children, with occurrence across other stimuli and settings. These gains were validated socially with 10 adults. Furthermore, increases in appropriate language had no effect on levels of inappropriate speech.

Constant and Progressive Time Delay Procedures for Teaching Children with Autism: A Literature Review

“…There were approximately 21 participants with minimal expressive language abilities, 7 participants who were nonverbal, and 6 who had ''average'' expressive verbal skills. Only 6 of the 12 studies reported the assessment tool used to diagnose ASD in participants: (a) the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (Heckaman et al, 1998), (b) the DSM III-R, 1980 (Leung, 1994;Matson et al 1990;Matson et al, 1993;Taylor & Harris, 1995), and (c) and the National Society for Autistic Children-1978 test (Charlop & Walsh, 1986). Matson et al (1990) reported one girl being treated with 25 g of fenfluramine daily to control hyperactivity, and this was the only study in which the use of medication during the investigation was mentioned.…”

Spontaneity of Communication in Individuals with Autism

“…McDonald and Hemmes (2003) defined unprompted verbal initiations as utterances that occurred in the absence of written cues. According to Matson et al (1990), the term ''spontaneous language'' referred to verbal utterances that occurred within 10 s of verbal stimuli, without adult modeling. In contrast, Dyer (1989) considered verbal requests spontaneous when they occurred in the presence of objects but were not preceded by a partner's verbalization for at least 10 s. Watson et al (1989) presented a broader and less precise definition, stating that spontaneous communication was cued by the environment but not prompted.…”

Establishing verbal repertoires: Toward the application of general case analysis and programming

“…Applied behavior analytic research has not always carefully attended to such issues, which may have implications for the definition and assessment of generalized performance. For example, in a recent study, Matson, Sevin, Fridley, and Love (1990) taught three students labelled as autistic to request items (" , please"), and to say "Thank you" and "You're welcome" upon receiving or giving items to another person. The investigators used objects and echoic prompts to evoke request responses ("_____, please").…”

“…An area of similarity between the two types of verbal behavior research is an interest in performance of verbal responses across similar and different contexts or stimulus classes (e.g., objects, people, places, activities). For example, in the study by Matson et al, (1990) described above, stimulus generalization was assessed by presenting students with other items which they could tact but which had not been involved in the training activities. All of the participants exhibited the trained responses during interactions involving these items.…”