Procedures for teaching appropriate gestural communication skills to children with autism.
Item
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Title
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Procedures for teaching appropriate gestural communication skills to children with autism.
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Identifier
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AAI9707070
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identifier
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9707070
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Creator
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Buffington, Dawn Marie.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Claire L. Poulson
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Date
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1996
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Behavioral | Speech Communication | Education, Special
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Abstract
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Children with autism are often deficient in their use of gestural communication. In the current study, four children with autism (ranging in age from 4 to 6 years) were taught to use gestures in combination with oral communication. A multiple-baseline across-responses design was used. An intervention package was introduced successively across three response categories. Each response category contained three gestures considered to be representative of either attention-directing/getting behavior, affective behavior, or descriptive behavior. Although none of the participants displayed any appropriate gestural and verbal responses during baseline, all four participants acquired this skill with the systematic implementation of modeling, prompting, and reinforcement. Generalization of the gestural and verbal responses from stimuli associated with treatment to stimuli not associated with treatment was measured. Generalization of the trained responses was also measured from the training stimuli and setting to novel stimuli presented in a novel setting. All generalization measures indicated that the children learned to use the gestural and verbal responses in the presence of novel stimuli and a novel setting. Social validity measures taken also revealed that the participants' behavior appeared more socially appropriate at the completion of the study than at the start of the study, and the participants' behavior was indistinguishable from that of their typically developing peers.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
