Acquisition of Fluent Listener Responses and the Educational Advancement of Young Children with Autism and Severe Language Delays

Abstract

We investigated the effects of a “listener emersion” procedure on pre and post numbers of weekly instructional trials (learn units) required to meet instructional objectives in all curricular programs for 8 children with autism (3 and 4 years old) using a multiple probe design across participants. The students had few or no functional verbal repertoires (speech or alternative forms) and their teachers were having difficulty achieving instructional objectives for matching, basic discriminations, and instructional control learning with the students. The dependent variable was the weekly numbers of learn units the students required to achieve instructional objectives in all curricular programs 1 week before, and 2 weeks after the listener emersion. All curricular programs were suspended during the implementation of listener emersion and the students were required to master several sets of listener responses such that the responses could only be controlled by the auditory components of teachers’ audio-taped speech, first to a mastery criterion without a rate requirement and then to mastery with rate of responding criterion. Following listener emersion the students required from one half to ten times fewer learn units to achieve objectives. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of a listener repertoire to children’s advancement and the identification of key de-