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Teaching Children with Autism Extended Verbal Utterances Under Audience Control in the Context of Show-and-Tell

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Abstract

The present study evaluated the efficacy of a discrete-trial-training procedure to bring extended verbal behavior under the convergent control of audience and contextual variables during a show-and-tell activity. Three children with autism were exposed initially to a baseline condition in which they were presented with a preferred item and asked to tell the class about it. Following low rates of responding, a differential reinforcement procedure was implemented that reinforced extending the verbal utterance word length beyond baseline levels allowing for an appropriate display of “show-and-tell” behavior. The results show that the procedures were efficacious in application with three children with autism, providing a method that can be conducted in classroom settings to teach a complex form of verbal operant behavior.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rehabilitation Institute, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, 62901, USA

    Mark R. Dixon & Jordan Belisle

  2. Collinsville School District, Collinsville, IL, USA

    Anne Blevins & Bambie Bethel

Authors
  1. Mark R. Dixon
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  2. Anne Blevins
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  3. Jordan Belisle
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  4. Bambie Bethel
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mark R. Dixon.

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Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in this study which involved human participants was in accordance with the ethical standards of the institution and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained for participation in this research.

Disclosure

First author receives small royalties from sales of the PEAK curriculum.

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Dixon, M.R., Blevins, A., Belisle, J. et al. Teaching Children with Autism Extended Verbal Utterances Under Audience Control in the Context of Show-and-Tell. Behav Analysis Practice 12, 194–198 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-018-0250-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-018-0250-z

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