Imitation training for children with autism.
Traditionally I have been teaching imitation to early learners through Discrete Trails. But often I find that this requires a lot of prompting and that the trainers must have very precise prompting and prompt fading skills. They rarely do, as they are early learners as well as the child with autism. This makes the initial and very important teaching of learning skills takes more time than necessary.
Today I was visiting several early and young learners to supervise on the ABA-program, and I tried to implement the imitation training based on the children´s initiative, and providing the natural consequences as reinforcers. It worked like a charm, and all the children started imitation simple motor actions. One with object, one gross motor and even fine motor actions. But for some of the children I had to supplement with arbitrary reinforcers to uphold responding, even if the initiative came from the child…. But this may is to be faded, such as the prompts.
This was a great experience that I think will chance the way a start ABA-programs; it will be limited discrete trail teaching in the early periods of the ABA-program. But I will try to collect some data on the difference before I change all..
The downside of this as I see it, and experience it – it´s harder to teach new trainers to do applied behavior analysis based on the natural environment and the child´s initiative, than to teach them to do discrete trails…. It require more knowledge and understanding of behavior analysis, and the skills has to be fluent to take advantage of every situation to teach new skills! And the collection of data is even harder…
But maybe we should spend more time on preparing and teaching the staff before the program starts?
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