Abstract
Researchers have shown that behavioral interventions that incorporate communication as a focus have demonstrated efficacy for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Researchers have demonstrated that individuals with IDD allocate responding to one communicative response modality over others when multiple communicative modalities produce reinforcement in the context of a concurrent-schedules arrangement. Identifying preference for communicative response modality provides one approach to incorporating aspects of social validity in the design of behavioral interventions for individuals with IDD, placing additional importance on demonstrations of the robustness of this preference. In the current study, we evaluated preference among concurrently available communication modalities for 14 individuals with IDD. Results of the study replicated previous, similar research in that the vast majority of individuals demonstrated a preference between communicative response modalities. We discuss the results within the context of social validity and implications for intervention.
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Notes
The study took place across two university based applied behavior analysis research enterprises. While many of the procedures were similar across sites, some variations existed.
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Funding
This research was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institutes of Child Health & Human Development (award R01HD069377) and the National Institutes of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (award R21DC015021) of the National Institutes of Health. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
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Approval for this study was obtained from the ethics committees of the University of Georgia and the University of Minnesota. The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.
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Ringdahl, J.E., Schieltz, K.M., O’Brien, M.J. et al. Communication Modality Preference and the Social Validity of Functional Communication and Mand Training. J Dev Phys Disabil (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10882-024-09956-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10882-024-09956-6