The acquisition of simple and compound sentence structure in an autistic child.
Reinforcement plus imitative prompts can build sentence structure in autistic children, but maintain reinforcement to keep gains.
01Research in Context
What this study did
One autistic child worked at a table with a teacher.
The teacher first said a sentence like "The ball is red." The child copied it.
If the child said the sentence correctly, the teacher gave candy or praise.
When the child got good, the teacher stopped giving candy to see if the skill stayed.
What they found
The child started using full sentences only when candy was given.
When candy stopped, the sentences stopped too.
When candy came back, the sentences came back.
Some new sentences showed up at home without extra teaching.
How this fits with other research
Griffith et al. (2012) used the same copy-and-reward idea to teach requests. They hid a needed item during play and waited for the child to ask. The method worked, showing the 1974 trick still works for new skills.
Higgins et al. (2021) used the same copy-and-reward trick on a teen who had lost her words. The teen started talking again. This shows the old method helps older kids too.
Yamamoto et al. (2024) tried only written cards, no candy. The gains were weak and shaky. This looks like a clash with the 1974 paper, but it is not. The 2024 study left out the reward part, proving the candy still matters.
Why it matters
Keep the reward in place after the child learns the sentence. Fade the candy slowly, not all at once. Watch for new sentences at home or school to see if the skill is spreading.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Contingent reinforcement and imitative prompts were used to teach an autistic child to use simple and compound sentences to describe a set of standard pictures. When imitative prompts and reinforcement were discontinued, correct use of simple sentences declined, but increased again when imitative prompts and reinforcement were re-instated. When imitative prompts and reinforcements were used to teach compound sentence structure, correct use of simple sentences declined and correct use of compound structure increased. At the end of training, the child also used novel compound sentences to describe a set of pictures on which he had received no direct training.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1974 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1974.7-473