Nesrhtens…..

The other day I was supervising in a kindergarten providing EIBI for a child with autism. The child has been working om matching skills for quite some time, making good progress in matching objects and pictures. But in the areas of matching colors and shapes, the progress was really poor.

But now the teacher had found a great solution, modifying the motivational operations (MO) for matching colors and shapes. The teacher had created a simple board game where the squares had different colors. She had also purchased a blank dice and colored the sides. Maybe it´s possible to purchase this to. The child then rolled the dice, and was allowed to move to the next square with matching color, and a smarties was available when he reached the final square. This greatly increased the motivation for matching colors, and the progression was back on track.

It´s great to see all the creative solutions many teachers exhibit in providing EIBI. This solution also teaches board games, and turn taking! This may not be suitable for other children, but worked great for this child!

For some children with autism receiving EIBI the acquisition of the first expressive words is a great challenge, and some children never develop a functional expressive repertoire. And there has been investigated several techniques for facilitating those first words; non-verbal imitation, physical prompting etc. In this issue of Journal of Autism and other Developmental Disorders (39) Kogel, Shirotova and Koegel has published a paper titled “Brief Report: Using Individualized Orienting Cues to Facilitate First-Word Acquisition in Non-Responders with Autism“.

This study investigatet whether individualized orienting cues could be identified, and wehter their presentation would result in vergal expressive words, and the results indicates that the use of orienting cues increased corredt responding to verbal models as well as subsequent word use. This study contributes to increase the research on techniques that praticioners can use with those children who do not show fuctional speach, and will by that be a useful contribution.

This article is published on open access, stating which positively increase the availibility.

The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) developed by Bondy and Frost has been widely used with children and adults with autism spectrum disorders both within an Applied Behavior Analytic approach and in other settings. And the PECS-manual has made the system available for many parents and professionals.

Over the years there has been published quite a few studies on the application of PECS for persons with ASD, and in this issue of Journal of Autism and other Developmental Disorders (39); Preston and Carter has published an excellent review of the efficacy of PECS. This study shows that PECS provides a means of communication for individuals with little or no functional speech, and there are indicated positive effect on social-comminicative and problem behaviors.

For more information on PECS, visit Pyramid Educational Consultants web-site.

Script fading procedures are well known within the behavior analytic education and treatment for children with autism, and has proven to be effective in increasing initiatives and interaction for a range of children with autism. However, script fading has not been showed to be effective implemented by parents in the home environment.

But, in this issue of Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Reagon and Higbee from Utah State University showing effective application of script fading by parents. And by this contribute to expanding research based behavior analytic techniques parents can implement in their home environment.

And the best part of this study, as I see it, is that in this study the parents were taught to develop, implement, and systematically fade scripts; not just implementing a procedure developed by the experts. The focus on teaching those who conduct the daily teachings sessions are the one of the most important aspects of providing effective and qualitative good services and education for all children with autism. And all research exploring this aspect in some way are welcomed.

Skinner´s definition of verbal operants describes the functional independence of the different operants, and research has demonstrated this several times. And in the recent issue of Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Shillingsburg and colleagues published a new study on training Yes and No responding across verbal operants.

This study supports previous findings that responses did not generalize across operants without additional training. The yes and no responses generalized within the verbal operants, but additional training was required for establishing these topographies in within other operants. This study included similar antecedents across operants, which has been supposed to facilitate generalization, but the results of this study do not show this effect.

As stated earlier and in this article, an interesting and important area for research are procedures and techniques to facilitate generalization across verbal operants. This would probably be a great contribution to the behavior analytic teaching for children with autism and others with language delays.