Spring Grove Intermediate Alison Mummert- Classroom Assistant Brooke Stock- TSS Leah Deitrich- Teacher Katie Staub- Internal Coach Mike Miklos- BCBA Errorless Procedures for the Generalization of Skills to the Natural Environment National Autism Conference-2010

Why do we use Natural Environment Teaching (NET)? Despite the success of behavioral approaches in teaching language, the development of generalized and functional communication repertoires in children with autism has been disappointing (Fay and Schuler, 1980)

What has led to these disappointing results? Many behavioral practitioners have failed to use Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior to guide their language teaching programs and/or incorporate NET into the program (Laski et al,1988).

TEACHING IN THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT The most effective teaching of language includes teaching in all settings throughout the day across persons and circumstances. In addition, a full and rich language repertoire of a student includes nonverbal responses to what someone says (receptive), verbal responses to his/her motivation or EO (mands,) verbal responses that match exactly what someone else just said (echoic), verbal responses to nonverbal stimuli in the environment (tacts), and verbal responses to what someone else just said that don't match what was just said (intraverbal). To develop this repertoire it will be essential to teach a student to respond this way in the natural environment as well as in formal intensive teaching. Dr. Vincent J. Carbone

Characteristics of NET Learner initiated choice of activities (motivation is naturally strong) Tasks and activities vary frequently The preferred items and activities chosen by student serve as the basis for the teacher/learner interaction Reinforcement is direct and specific to the activity Loose structure and many examples of concepts support generalization of language.

Case Study Question The study was conducted to determine if the use of errorless teaching procedures increase the number of skills generalized to mastery level in natural environment conditions?

Student Profiles CW CW is 12 years old. Communication mode: Vocal Learner Level: VB-MAPP Level 2 Learner CW’s strengths are in the areas of reading sight words which can be used to teach skills in other areas, he can fill-in basic songs/phrases, will mand for wants and needs throughout the day though articulation is sometimes poor and often difficult to discern by the listener and will participate in group settings most of the time. He has a history of behaviors that impede his learning. These behaviors currently occur at a low frequency.

CW VB-MAPP

Student Profiles BH BH is 12 years old. Communication Mode: Vocal Learner Level: VB-MAPP Level 2 Learner He uses receptive language well and can complete fill ins for basic songs and activities, mands for most wants and needs though articulation is poor and often difficult to discern by the listener, does not participate well in group settings BH has a strong history of aggressive behaviors which can impede his learning.

BH VB MAPP

Student Profiles AD AD is 12 years old. Communication mode: Vocal Learner Level: VB-MAPP Level 2-3 Learner He participates in group activities and approaches and engages others, uses receptive language skills well, mands for wants and needs throughout the day, and does well with fill ins to songs, fun activities, everyday routines, and answering questions regarding the features, functions, and classes of items.

AD VB-MAPP

Dependent & Independent Variable DV The dependent variable was the number of items mastered in natural environment teaching sessions for items previously mastered in intensive teaching sessions. IV The teaching protocol involved presenting the item to be mastered in NET with a 0 second prompt, followed by a transfer trial, some distracter trials and then running a check trial for the target item (PTDC sequence.) Teaching sessions were 5 to 15 minutes (even though the actual activity was sometimes of longer duration.) All teaching sessions included at least 2 students. The type of activity used will varied based on various NET activities occurring in the classroom.

Reliability We conducted treatment integrity checks (independent variable) for 10 of the sessions and collected reliability data on all of those. –Treatment integrity was 100% –IOA (inter-observer agreement) for the integrity checks was: 100% We also collected IOA data for 2 of the probe sessions (dependent variable) IOA for probe sessions was 94%

Treatment Integrity Checklist

Case Study Design Baseline: Baseline data was collected for 3 days for first student; baseline for other students was at least 5 days Intervention design: AB Design with replication across students

Case Study Design cont’d Target Choice: Skills mastered during intensive teaching sessions were probed in the natural environment. Those skills that the student made an error on for at least 2 presentations were chosen as target items. Target selection was somewhat of a challenge due to not meeting criteria for target items selection (there were very few items from when presented in the natural environment) No new targets were introduced

Case Study Design cont’d The students’ ability to generalize was attributed to careful planning and artful presentation of instruction during the intensive teaching sessions. Procedures used in intensive teaching include  Pairing teaching conditions with valuable reinforcers  Errorless teaching and error correction procedures  Mixing and varying instructional demands  Multiple exemplar training  Interspersing mastered items with target items

Case Study Design cont’d Selection of activities for NET was made based on: Activities that were already motivating (valuable) to students. Activities for which students were not as motivated, additional reinforcers were available. Activities which allowed the opportunities to present the target items. Exemplars for the target items varied across activities. Most importantly….we made the activities FUN!

Case Study Design Cont’d Daily Cold Probe Each target skill was probed on its first presentation daily for each student regardless of what phase the student was in. Student Probes CW »Tact: bag, block, chicken AD »Tact: These are all (shapes), turkey, What am I doing? (opening, closing) BH »Tact: Chair, milk, soda

Case Study Design Cont’d Teaching Procedures Baseline Phase: no teaching procedures used Treatment Phase: Errorless Teaching Procedures used on each presentation of the target skill with the exception of the initial cold probe.

Case Study Design Cont’d Example of Errorless Teaching Procedures: Prompt: 0 second prompt TeacherTeacherStudent What is it?MilkMilk Transfer: Provide a 2 second delay after presentation of SD TeacherStudent What is it?Milk Distract: Present 1-4 other demands of mastered skills TeacherStudent Show me folding.Folds paper. Where’s the chicken?Points to the chicken. Check: Represent original target skill. TeacherStudent What is it?Milk

Case Study Design Cont’d If at any point a student made an error when running errorless teaching procedures, the instructor immediately ran an error correction procedure, which consisted of re-presented the S D with a "0" second-delay prompt, followed by the transfer, distracters, and check trials (EPTDC sequence).

Graph Analysis

Snow

Graph Analysis

Interpretation CW mastered all 3 target items within 17 sessions BH mastered all 4 target items within 12 sessions. AD mastered 3 of the 4 target items within 13 sessions. 2 of the 3 students mastered al target items. All 3 students demonstrated some gain following initiation of intervention.

Study Results The study suggests that errorless teaching procedures used in the natural environment are effective for some students though more exemplars may need to be taught before mastery of an item can be attained.

Considerations Once skills were probed in the natural environment and successive errors occurred during baseline, students were more likely to make errors on the same skills during intensive teaching sessions. If a skill was not mastered by another student they would incorrectly respond to the SD before the target student had a chance to respond therefore providing an inaccurate prompt. Example: CW did not have opening mastered in IT or NET. When AD was asked, “What am I doing?” in the presence of the teacher opening a bottle, CW would say “folding” before AD had a chance to respond, which resulted in AD responding “folding”

Considerations cont’d Skills chosen for AD were more difficult than those chosen for the other students. Example: What am I doing? (opening, closing) is a much more complex skill and looks vastly different across exemplars (bottle, bag, door) when compared to a simple tact of an item. Group participation skills were not thoroughly considered before choosing BH for the study. Behaviors that occurred during some sessions possibly impacted his responses on probe items.

References Halle, J. W., Baer, D. M., & Spradline, J. E. (1981). Teacher's generalized use of delay as a stimulus control procedure to increase language use in handicapped children. Journal of Applied Behavioral Analysis, 14, Cautilli, Joseph. (2006). Validation of the verbal behavior package: Old wine new bottle- A reply to Carr & Firth (2005). Journal of Speech and Language Pathology- Applied Behavior Analysis, 1 (1), this article provides references toward mileux teaching NLP, and other NET processes... Laski, K. et al (1988), Training Parents to use the Natural Language Paradigm to Increase their Autistic Children’s Speech. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 21,

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