Abstract
Although Discrete-trial Teaching (DTT) is effective in teaching a many skills to children with autism, its proper implementation requires rigorous staff training. This study used an interactive computer simulation program (“DTkid”) to teach staff relevant DTT skills. Participants (N = 12) completed two sets of pre-tests either once (n = 7) or twice (n = 5) before brief DTkid training. These evaluated (a) simulated interactive teaching using DTkid and (b) in vivo teaching of three basic skills (receptive and expressive labeling; verbal imitation) to children with autism. Post-tests showed that DTkid training, rather than repeated testing, was significantly associated with improvements in staff’s ability to implement DTT both within the simulation and in vivo, and that the skills acquired showed both stimulus and response generalization.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to express our appreciation The Sharland Foundation for supporting this research. We would also like to thank Rachel Lowe and Dimitra Tavoulari, Masters students in Behavior Analysis at Bangor University, UK, for helping with data collection and scoring.
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This research relied on software developed as the result of an award from the Economic and Social Research Council of Great Britain (RES-000-22-0142; Principal Investigator: Prof. Bob Remington).
Appendices
Appendix 1
This screen shot of the DTkid simulation shows the child working on a receptive labeling program in evaluation mode. The teacher chooses from the panel below which objects to put on the table, what instruction to give and depending on the child’s response what consequence to administer.
Appendix 2
The Evaluation of Therapeutic Effectiveness (ETE) Scoring Sheet (adapted from Koegel et al. 1977).
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Eldevik, S., Ondire, I., Hughes, J.C. et al. Effects of Computer Simulation Training on In Vivo Discrete Trial Teaching. J Autism Dev Disord 43, 569–578 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-012-1593-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-012-1593-x