The use of mirrors during imitation training

Do mirrors facilitate acquisition of motor imitation in children diagnosed with autism?

Findings

Imitation remains as one of the most important behavior cusps in a young learner. Motor imitation can lead the utilization of gestural prompts and prompt fading, while vocal imitation can lead to the utilization of a verbal prompt. Both of these prompts are used heavily with early intervention, and both require some form of imitation in order to be effective. Therefore, the study of more efficient imitation training is very important. These researchers utilized mirrors to increase the stimulus salience of the prompts. This was done to get faster acquisition. Overall, motor imitation acquisition did occur faster, indicating that the mirror prompt technique was effective.

Research to Practice

As we have talked about in other articles, speed matters when it comes to teaching young learners these behavioral cusps. The faster generalized imitation is mastered, the faster the child can access other goals and behaviors. Therefore, the finding that a mirror does increase the speed of acquisition is significant for any practitioner working with young learners. The incorporation of an additional mirror during the training session will increase the salience of the model prompts. Notably, the models did maintain following the removal of the mirrors, which shows that the mirrors did not promote prompt dependency.

Miller, S. A., Rodriguez, N. M., & Rourke, A. J. (2015). Do mirrors facilitate acquisition of motor imitation in children diagnosed with autism? Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 48(1), 194-198. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.187