Autism & Developmental
Evaluation of a Treatment Package to Increase Mean Length of Utterances for Children with Autism
★ The Verdict
An errorless-teaching plus differential-reinforcement package reliably grows longer, more complex mand utterances in young autistic learners.
✓ Read this if BCBAs running verbal behavior programs with preschool or early elementary autistic learners.
✗ Skip if Teams focused only on PECS or sign language without vocal goals.
01Research in Context
01
Summary
Overall finding summary: All six autistic children quickly learned to speak in longer, clearer sentences when an errorless package with strong reinforcement was used.
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Pick the child’s strongest mand and start prompting the full phrase “I want ___ please” with immediate praise and a small edible.
02At a glance
Intervention
verbal behavior intervention
Design
single case other
Sample size
6
Population
autism spectrum disorder
Finding
positive
03Original abstract
Skinner’s (1957) classification of mand responses has spawned decades of research related to teaching individuals with developmental disabilities. However, few studies have evaluated how to teach individuals with autism to progress from simple to more complex mands for desired items and activities. The present study used a treatment package consisting of errorless teaching, differential reinforcement, and systematic decision rules to increase the number of words per mand utterance used by 6 children with autism. Daily probes were conducted in the absence of prompting and differential reinforcement throughout every stage of the treatment. Results showed that all children showed significant developmental gains in the mean length of utterances. Increased rates of manding, increased emission of mand frames, and decreased instances of indicating responses (i.e., pointing, reaching) in the absence of mands were also observed. Implications regarding the feasibility of intensive mand training in practice are discussed.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2020 · doi:10.1007/s40617-020-00417-y