Verbal Imitation Research Articles

Response variability and turn taking in cooperative play.

Abstract This study investigated whether response variability and turn taking were controlled by the play partner's responding. Variability and turn taking was assessed in two conditions following an ABA experimental design. Participants were three preschool aged children with autism and eight nondisabled preschool aged children. During the A-condition, the partner emitted play responses that were topically related to the participant's preceding play response, and during the B-condition, the partner emitted play responses that were topically unrelated to the participant's preceding play response. Results showed marked reduction in play variability and turn taking during the B-condition for all participants, demonstrating that variability and turn taking in cooperative play may be affected by the partner's play during the interaction. Key Words: cooperative play, variability, turn taking, typical children and children with autism. Introduction The analysis of social interaction in terms of both structural and functional properties is critical as a basis for understanding the occurrence of enduring social interaction and for the development of effective programs to facilitate social interaction in people with limited skills in this area. Behaviors that are evoked and maintained by properties of one or several other persons behavior are usually considered social, and the contingencies in which these behaviors are evoked are usually labeled social interaction (Skinner, 1957). Reciprocity, as an overarching concept, is said to be the nature of such interaction (Strain, Shores, & Timm, 1977) indicating a dependent relation between the responses involved. Functional aspects of social interaction have been discussed by several researchers, and often within the context of cooperation (e.g., Guerin, 1994; Hake, & Olvera, 1978; Schmitt, 1984). A cooperative contingency is according to Hake and Olvera (1978) identified when the reinforcers for each person involved is at least partially dependent upon the other person's responses. Reaching such a conclusion however, may require a further analysis of structural features of response patterns that occurs between the partners involved. Especially since an interaction as such seldom involves arbitrary reinforcers (e.g., food or money) but idiosyncratic responses, supposedly containing both reinforcing and discriminative stimulus functions. Jahr, Eldevik and Eikeseth (2000) argued that response alternation and response variability constitute some of the structural properties of a cooperative contingency from which functional properties may be derived. In this study, a procedure to establish cooperative play in children with autism was investigated and later replicated with typical children as participants (Jahr & Eldevik, 2002). The training elements included verbal description and imitation of modeled play episodes, utilizing a multiple exemplar strategy. Following training, participants in both studies could initiate play episodes and sustain episodes initiated by their play partner, and they were able to take turns in play episodes that contained a larger number of play responses than were practiced during training. Moreover, a considerable increase in play variability was evident for each child. Hence, the children seldom repeated their own play responses or persevered on specific objects. Instead they utilized a variety of play materials and their play responses were usually an adequate supplement to their play partners' responses and thereby a thematic extension of the play episode. That the children and their partner were playing within the same topic was confirmed by independent raters during social validity measures. The observed increase in turn taking and the emergent ability to vary responding in accordance to both the play partners' response and own previously emitted responses was assumed to indicate a functional relationship between the responses involved (Jahr et al. …

The Judaic Other in Dante, the Gawain Poet, and Chaucer by Catherine C. Cox

REVIEWS ciously drops the brief passages of proverbial wisdom or etiological material , which Chaucer could have recalled from memory. Anita Obermeier adds a welcome concluding chapter on the ‘‘Retraction .’’ After discussing the medieval understanding of retractio as ‘‘retreatment ’’ or ‘‘revision’’ rather than recantation, she prints an example from Bede, four analogues of Chaucer’s profession of authorial humility, twenty-three analogues of the idea of worldly vanity, and three analogues that include lists of works by the author. In the texts and information it provides, this S&A is a worthy successor to B&D. As a work of criticism, it is far more heterogeneous. In 1940, the contributors were unified less by the editors’ mandate to refrain from interpreting their material than by shared, unstated assumptions about what makes a text a source or an analogue. With few exceptions (e.g., Bleeth, Beidler), these assumptions remain unanalyzed in the new S&A. Some contributors cleave to old conceptions, others take a more expansive view, still others combine elements of both. Too often defining terms, such as ‘‘possible source,’’ which need comment, are adopted without it; too often assertions about textual affiliation made in their name pass without interrogation. What does it mean, I found myself asking, to consider a text a source in the absence of direct verbal imitation? Can we not develop a theory of cultural translation that speaks meaningfully of the influence of analogues by acknowledging the full weight of their differences? Like the old, the new Sources and Analogues is an invitation to revisit ideas about the purview and practice of source criticism; meanwhile, for the many treasures it does contain, we owe the editors and contributors our heartfelt thanks. Warren Ginsberg University of Oregon Catherine C. Cox. The Judaic Other in Dante, the Gawain Poet, and Chaucer. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2005. Pp. 265. $65.00. Catherine Cox’s The Judaic Other is, by turns, illuminating and exasperating . Her overall framework—that ‘‘supersessionist hermeneutics, as both concept and method, informs the poetry and poetics of the late PAGE 479 479 ................. 16596$ CH13 11-01-10 14:08:17 PS STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER medieval period’’ (p. 1)—is one with which I profoundly agree. Cox’s readings of textual ‘‘confiscatory hermeneutic gestures’’—founded on ‘‘Christianity’s [conflicted] relationship to its originary matrix’’ (p. 3), leading to ‘‘platitudinous rehearsal’’ (p. 21) of anti-Judaic stereotypes, ‘‘performative utterances of the faithful’’ (p. 23), and ‘‘[u]surpative appropriation [that] erases the identity of those whose heritage is co-opted in the guise of respect and inclusiveness’’ (p. 16)—are thoroughly argued in her analyses of ‘‘the hermeneutic Jew in Dante’s Commedia’’ (chapter 2), ‘‘the Hebrew truth in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’’ (chapter 3), and ‘‘the Jewish Pardoner and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales’’ (chapter 4). However, I find these readings to be ultimately unconvincing , based as they are on the assumption that these poets knew and knowingly drew upon some specific Hebrew traditions, particularly the talion code and the Mishnah Sotah (p. 7). Cox elaborates at length on the misinterpretation of talion and the Sotah in the Christian tradition, and her arguments that such misinterpretations fitted Christian supersessionist purposes are entirely convincing. However, that Cox is able to bring such misinterpretations and revaluations to our attention is not the same as saying the poets knew and used them. Cox’s book, therefore , also raises, albeit unintentionally, the question with which all readers are plagued, medievalists perhaps more than most: How much of what we read out of a text is purely an effect of what we read into it? As her epilogue makes clear, Cox is intent on putting ‘‘the Jew’’ and ‘‘the Judaic’’ back into the Christian tradition from which they have been deliberately erased even to the present day (for one instance, see the classroom episode described on page 152), rather than on showing that the specific traditions she cites are those with which the writers on whom she focuses had knowledge, familiarity, or even passing acquaintance . And if they did have such traditions in mind, how did they obtain them? I don’t doubt that we can—and should—read medieval texts with our own knowledge, ideas, biases...

Verbal communication outcomes in children with autism after in‐home father training

This retrospective study examined the efficacy of in-home father training on the communicative outcomes of children with autism. The in-home training consisted of two components: (1) expectant waiting; and (2) imitation with animation. Efficacy of parent training was examined by measuring the ratio of utterances produced by the parents to the utterances produced by the children and the number of verbal imitation by the parents. Outcomes of the children's verbal production were examined by measuring the number of (1) single word utterances; (2) different words produced; and (3) verbal response to questions. Following training there was a decrease in the ratio of parent to child utterances and an increase in (1) the use of imitation by the parents; and (2) the number of single words and different words produced by the children. Results of this study suggested that the parents had learned to wait for their children to communicate verbally during communicative interactions and to interact more efficiently with their children by using verbal imitation. Overall, the results of this study support the efficacy of parent training that focuses on promotion of social reciprocity, and have important implications for clinicians and future research.

Opportunity versus disposition as predictors of infants’ and mothers’ verbal and action imitation

Intrapersonal versus interpersonal factors were examined as predictors of verbal and action imitation during free play interactions by 20 mothers and their infants at ages 10, 13, 17, and 21 months. Participants’ conversational utterances and object play indicated their intrapersonal dispositions to engage in those behaviors spontaneously and provided measures of interpersonal opportunities for partner imitation. Analyses of predictive relations, including partial correlations controlling for the influence of partner modeling of imitation as well as the factors of disposition and opportunity alternately, yielded relative consistency across verbal and action domains, but distinctive patterns by partner. Infants’ imitation was more strongly predicted by disposition than by opportunity. In contrast, mothers’ imitation was more strongly predicted by opportunity, although mothers’ disposition also predicted their verbal imitation late in the second year. These results highlight the need to consider both dispositional and interpersonal influences on children's and mothers’ imitation.

A Comparison of Limb Praxis Abilities of Persons with Developmental Dyspraxia and Adult Onset Apraxia

The purpose of this study was to determine whether gesture performance in developmental dyspraxia and adult onset apraxia are similar. The performance of children and adults with dyspraxia and adults with apraxia on similar tasks were compared. A convenience sample of six groups of participants were as follows: children with learning disabilities and dyspraxia, young adults with learning disabilities and dyspraxia, older adults with left hemisphere brain damage and apraxia, and three age-matched groups of control participants. There were 10 subjects in each group except the young adults with learning disabilities. Performance on two types of motor tasks was measured: item (transitive, intransitive) and mode (verbal command and imitation). A mixed-model analysis of variance showed significant main effects for Diagnosis, Item, Mode, and the interactions of Diagnosis X Item and Mode X Item. This study suggests that participants with developmental dyspraxia and adult onset apraxia exhibit similar performance deficits in gestural motor tasks. The children and young adults with dyspraxia also scored similarly implying that dyspraxic behaviors continue into adulthood. Application of the findings to intervention suggest that task performance may improve if therapists demonstrate motor tasks and eliminate or minimize tool use.

A Brief Clinical Scale for the Early Evaluation of Imitation Disorders in Autism

Many authors have described a deficit of imitation of gestures and of symbolic and affective tasks in infants and young children with autism. This deficit is paradoxically associated with echolalia (atypical verbal imitation) and echopraxia (atypical gesture imitation) which in themselves appear to be excessive imitation. We have developed a brief clinical scale, the Imitation Disorders Evaluation scale (IDE scale), to evaluate these different early features of imitation disorders in autism. The present article reports (1) the validation study (inter- rater reliability, factor analysis) of the IDE scale carried out with a population of 30 infants and young children with autism aged from 10 to 46 months, and (2) the results of a follow-up study in which this scale was applied to a group of young children with autism (from 30 to 46 months) over 9 months’ treatment. Factor analysis provided two factors: factor 1, called ‘deficient imitation’, comprising six items describing a deficit of facial, gestural, vocal and affective imitation; and factor 2, called ‘atypical imitation’, including echolalia, echopraxia and variability of imitation. The descriptive results of the follow-up study emphasize the sensitivity of the IDE scale for assessment of improvement in imitation disorders of early autism.

The Concept of Nature and Human Nature in Quintilian's Psychology and Theory of Instruction

Abstract: Abstract: Nature is a highly tendentious Word and was already so in the time of Quintilian. Since the Stoic ideal was "to live according to Nature," the concept can be invoked persuasively in every phase of education. But Nature had other regular functions in rhetoric: to demarcate innate talent from acquired skill (Natura vs. Ars); to distinguish reality, the outside world, from verbal imitation; and to privilege preferred patterns of argumentation. These competing uses lead to inconsistencies, especially in presenting the relationship between Nature and imitation. The purpose of this paper is to detect these contradictions and illustrate the assumptions that underlie them in Quintilian's tieatment of invention, organization, and expression.

Praxis on Verbal Command and Imitation

Nondysfunctional 4-year-old and 6-year-old children were administered the Praxis on Verbal Command subtest of the Sensory Integration and Praxis Tests (SIPT) (Ayres, 1989) under two conditions. One condition was administered in the standardized manner on verbal command; the other involved administration of the same items on imitation. An analysis of variance indicated that the variables of age and condition were significant, whereas sex was not significant. The Age x Condition interaction was also significant. Scheffé multiple comparisons revealed a significant difference between 4-year-olds and 6-year-olds on verbal command but not on imitation. Verbal-command scores were significantly lower than imitation scores for the 4-year-olds but not for the 6-year-olds.

Effects of imitation on language comprehension and transfer to production in children with mental retardation.

This study investigated the effects of verbal imitation on the comprehension of novel object-location responses and subsequent transfer of these responses to production. A matrix training procedure was used to teach 2 children with moderate mental retardation syntactic rules for combining known and unknown words into two-word utterances. An alternating treatments design was used with two conditions: receptive teaching with imitation of the target phrase and no imitation of the phrase. Findings suggested that the use of imitation facilitated both generalized receptive learning and transfer to production in both subjects.

Italic Calvino: The Place of the Emperor in Invisible Cities

Italic Calvino:The Place of the Emperor in Invisible Cities Laurence A. Breiner (bio) As if hesitating on some sort of threshold between the modern and the postmodern, the novel presents a double structure of narrativity and seriality. . . . The seriality of the cities defines the trait we shall treat as postmodern, while the framing device, the narrative of those cities which would put them into a certain perspective, relates to a modern, or in any case pre-postmodern, esthetic of a mise-en-abyme or "narrative context." (James, "Seriality" 144) Rephrase that. In Invisible Cities Marco Polo's attitude to his descriptions of cities is postmodern; Kublai Khan's is "pre-postmodern." Well enough; we expect writers to be more avant-garde than their readers and almost anyone to be more avant-garde than an emperor. But Calvino, by authoring this Marco, thereby demonstrates that he is (or can be if he chooses) at least as up-to-date aesthetically as his character. So the question arises: Why is this old-fashioned emperor invited into the text? "Invited" is not too strong a word; Calvino has gone to some trouble to get him here. Yet his presence along with Marco within the frame [End Page 559] further complicates the book's relationship to issues of modernity and postmodernity. Invisible Cities is first of all an imitation of Marco Polo's Travels, a loosely organized series of accounts of places in Asia. That model lacks even the chronological sequence of a travel diary. Instead it is the often haphazard recall of discrete bits of travel memory, a prison rumination, told to an amanuensis. It does for Polo's experience of cities what the Essais do for Montaigne's experience of books, or for that matter what Petrarch's Canzoniere do for his experience of Laura. Like Montaigne and Petrarch, Marco Polo wrote a thoroughly postmodern book. We would be happy with a parodic homage to Marco's Travels from the hand of Calvino, and indeed for many readers that is what Invisible Cities becomes after first reading. They (we) actually use the book in a way that ignores all formal issues: as a bedside book, read (after the first time) repeatedly but nearly at random, and perhaps never again straight through. It is treated in effect as a collection, with the same limited coherence as the Travels. But in spite of the often explicit verbal imitation of the Travels with which most of the descriptions begin, Calvino makes a point of differentiating his book from its model by two formal innovations. The first is the imposition of an elaborate armature, compounded out of an arithmetic sequence, a series of proper names, and a series of thematic rubrics. Such a feature is in fact characteristic of bedside readers; texts of this kind may lack expressive form, but they do have to stop, for purely practical reasons, and so arbitrary shapes are imposed: days of the week, thematic categories, other formal armatures. But if Calvino's structure seems too complex to be merely an arbitrary convenience, it has so far resisted most attempts to demonstrate its significance. Laura Marello offers several perspectives on the design of the armature, but they are purely descriptive. Heinz Riedt suggests possible numerological symbolism; Albrecht Ohly speculates about the possible value of a musical analysis of the armature's "dissonant" relations (66); and Teresa de Lauretis pursues a semiotic approach ("Models"); but no comprehensive account has yet been proposed. No one has yet broken the code of the cities' names (if code there is). The elaborated numerical structure seems a red herrings no more meaningful than simple chapter numbers, because nothing is added in the way of significant subordinations. Yet it is a structure achieved at some cost; as Carol P. James has observed, "the arithmetic arrangement misplaces the thematics of the groups" ("Seriality" 147). However, the system of interlocking thematic rubrics often has little relation to its specific contents: it is rarely possible to decide on the basis of a city's description what rubric it is appearing under, and many cities would be equally [End Page 560] at home under some other rubric.1 The two...

Language training with autistic children using four different modes of presentation

The purpose of this study was to determine (1) whether comprehension, production, and spontaneous use of language are greater following language training by sign-alone, speech-alone, simultaneous communication, or alternating between speech and sign; (2) whether high- and low-verbal imitators benefits from the same mode of treatment; and (3) whether retention of the language skills differs among the four training conditions. Subjects were 60 moderate to severe autistic children randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions. Subjects were divided into high- and low-verbal imitators based on verbal imitation performances. The results indicated that the high-verbal imitators did equally well in all four treatment conditions, while the low-verbal imitators did poorest in the speech-alone condition. The high-verbal imitators performed better than did the low-verbal imitators in all of the treatment conditions. Words or signs learned were retained for three months after treatment regardless of the treatment condition or level of imitative ability. The results were discussed in terms of the efficacy of using sign language with autistic children.

Speech following sign language training in autistic children with minimal verbal language

This study was carried out to test the main and interaction effects of training condition and pretreatment-elicited verbal imitation ability when predicting spoken language use during language training of 60 minimally verbal autistic children. Subjects were randomly assigned to Speech Alone, Sign Alone, Simultaneous Presentation of Sign and Speech, and Alternating Presentation of Sign and Speech training conditions. Speech Alone, Simultaneous Presentation, and Alternating Presentation condition facilitated more child-initiated speech during treatment than did the Sign Alone condition. Regardless of training condition, pretreatment verbal imitation ability positively predicted the size of child-initiated spoken vocabulary observed during training. Exploratory analyses indicated that, in addition to verbal imitation, pretreatment age and IQ may also predict spoken language developed during training.

Teaching Mothers to Imitate Their Handicapped Children: Effects on Maternal Mands

The purpose of this study was to teach mothers of children with handicaps to imitate their child's behavior and to measure the effects on the number of mands displayed by the mothers during 10-minute play sessions. The procedures for teaching mothers included telling them to imitate their child, demonstrating a verbal and motor imitation, setting a goal for the frequency of imitation, providing graphic feedback, and delivering verbal praise. These procedures were implemented within a combination multiple baseline and reversal design. A partial interval sampling system was used to measure the frequency with which caregivers imitated their child and provided mands to the child. The results indicated that (a) implementation of the teaching procedures was related to the percentage of intervals during which mothers imitated their child and (b) an inverse relationship existed between the percentage of intervals in which limitations and mands occurred (as imitations increased, mands decreased). Throughout the investigation, the mothers were not aware that mands were being measured.

Worlds Within Women: Myth and Mythmaking in Fantastic Literature by Women , and: Radiant Daughters: Fictional American Women , and: Merlin's Daughters: Contemporary Women Writers of Fantasy , and: Forbidden Fruit: On the Relationship between Women and Knowledge in Doris Lessing, Selma Lagerlöf, Kate Chopin, and Margaret Atwood (review)

Reviewed by: Worlds Within Women: Myth and Mythmaking in Fantastic Literature by Women, and: Radiant Daughters: Fictional American Women, and: Merlin's Daughters: Contemporary Women Writers of Fantasy, and: Forbidden Fruit: On the Relationship between Women and Knowledge in Doris Lessing, Selma Lagerlöf, Kate Chopin, and Margaret Atwood Elizabeth Boyd Thompson Thelma J. Shinn . Worlds Within Women: Myth and Mythmaking in Fantastic Literature by Women. Westport: Greenwood, 1986. 214 pp. $29.95. Thelma J. Shinn . Radiant Daughters: Fictional American Women. Westport: Greenwood, 1986. 212 pp. $29.95. Charlotte Spivack . Merlin's Daughters: Contemporary Women Writers of Fantasy. Westport: Greenwood, 1987. 185 pp. $29.95. Bonnie A. St. Andrews . Forbidden Fruit: On the Relationship between Women and Knowledge in Doris Lessing, Selma Lagerlöf, Kate Chopin, and Margaret Atwood. Troy: Whitston, 1986. 176 pp. $18.50. Worlds Within Women is a good example of feminist criticism at its worst. Thelma Shinn's style is obfuscatory, relying heavily on a combination of some of the least attractive buzz words of feminist, psychological, and myth criticism and undigested snippets of quotations. The following passage is typical: It [science fiction] also has value as a literary genre which can offer a surface of alternative possibilities subject to validation, however. Its Janus-faced relationship to the science of its surface and the fiction of its message can be seen in Frye's further discussion of literature as "an area of verbal imitation midway between events and ideas. . . ." The pastiche of buzz words, quotations from other critics (many of dubious reputation—or none at all) and from the books under discussion are frequently decontextualized and incoherent. Moreover, it is often difficult to tell whether Shinn is quoting from a science fiction novel or a "literary" critic, a difficulty that should indicate both the level of much of the criticism cited and the scholarly attention to citation. The confusion between fiction and criticism is only intensified by the fact that Shinn's personal philosophy is at times indistinguishable from either one. For example, when Shinn writes that "rebirth can take place within this journey as well, within the time of our lives, and the effects of that [End Page 768] rebirth can enable us to be agents of change" and "can even help us to initiate changes in our society that will reinstate the values of the Goddess," it is hard to know what we are reading—a science fiction novel, a sermon, or a critical argument. One might suspect that such an approach would skew readings of specific novels. It does. According to Shinn, one of the "primary accomplishments" of Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness is the reinstatement of "communication, community, and life fitted to its environment as central values for human behavior." Shinn's insight into Doris Lessing's mythmaking is that "isolation can lead to sterility." This book is an embarrassment not only to feminists but also to scholars engaged in myth criticism and/or the study of science fiction. In her introduction, Shinn claims that Radiant Daughters "approaches the human condition in its social context through the fictional American women of contemporary writers because in them I have discovered the key to who we are and where we are going." As in Worlds Within Women, however, lack of coherence, not only in the overall argument but also within individual paragraphs, is a major problem. Her argument is quite supple, often twisting itself in circles. This logical incoherence is aided and abetted by her habitual failure to identify quotations and the frequent incongruity of quotations apparently from the primary texts. The inappropriateness of the quotations is exacerbated by problems with transitions—they are usually incomplete, inaccurate, or nonexistent. Radiant Daughters is happily less jargon-ridden than Worlds Within Women but unfortunately just as devoid of content. Unlike Shinn, Charlotte Spivack has a clear and occasionally elegant prose style. It is too bad that she wastes it on elaborate plot summaries of novels that would not sustain close critical analysis. Her campaign to "challenge the politics of exclusion that has kept works of fantasy, particularly those written by contemporary women, in the dark or, worse, the playroom" in Merlin's...

The effects of three different television programs on young children's peer interactions and toy play

The current study investigated the impact of different television programming on the social interactions and toy play of preschool children. Same-sex pairs of young children were observed during three types of television programs: cartoons, Sesame Street, and situation comedies. Children were also observed when the television screen was black. Children visually attended to the cartoons the most, Sesame Street less often, and the situation comedy the least. Cartoons dramatically depressed social interaction. Sesame Street elicited the most verbal imitation. Both Sesame Street and the situation comedy allowed the children to divide activity among their peers, the toys, and the television program. Girls verbally imitated program content more than boys. This pattern of findings remained after the children's visual attention to the television was statistically controlled. Several developmental trends were detected. The image of children “mesmerized” in front of the television set, foresaking social interactions and active involvement with their object environment, held true for only one type of programming, namely, cartoons. During the other programs, the children remained active and socially involved.

Communication Intervention Strategies for Autistic Children: Variations on Pragmatic Approaches Using a Behavioural Framework

Language intervention procedures used with autistic children have typically focused on teaching the structure of language using operant techniques. Recently, attention is being focused on procedures which emphasize teaching the function of language within an environment that highlights natural interactions. Both approaches offer valuable techniques while demonstrating essential differences in target goals and reinforcement systems. This paper outlines some essential contrasts and reports the results of a combined approach for communication intervention with six functionally mute autistic children. The intervention program emphasizes establishing routines that facilitate conversational exchanges while using intensive modelling of verbal responses and systematic reinforcers that are intrinsic to the communication act. Examples of activities and training procedures are given. Results from such a program reveal substantial increases in verbal skills, including verbal imitation skills, verbal requests, verbal ...

Convergence and Methodology in Science and Criticism

at no point is there any direct learning of literature itself. Physics is an organized body of knowledge about nature, and a student of it says that he is learning physics, not nature. Art, like nature, has to be distinguished from the systematic study of it, which is criticism.... Literature is not a subject of study, but an object of study: the fact that it consists of words ... makes us confuse it with the talking verbal disciplines. The libraries reflect our confusion by cataloguing criticism as one of the subdivisions of literature. Criticism, rather, is to art what history is to action and philosophy to wisdom: a verbal imitation of a human productive power which in itself does not speak.l

Acquisition of expressive signing by autistic children: an evaluation of the relative effects of simultaneous communication and sign-alone training.

Two methods of training autistic children to use manual signs were compared. Two children, one mute and one capable of some verbal imitation, were taught to use signs as expressive labels for pictures of objects. Using an alternating treatments design, speed of sign acquisition was compared across two training conditions in which signs were presented either accompanied by, or without, the corresponding verbal label. In both conditions, the training procedure incorporated reinforcement, modeling, prompting, fading, and stimulus rotation. The efficacy of training in both treatment conditions was demonstrated by the use of a multiple baseline control across signs, but no clear differences in acquisition speed across conditions were apparent. Posttests conducted to assess stimulus control of signing, and learning of verbal labels when these were present in training, showed that the behavior of the imitative, but not the mute, child was controlled by the verbal stimuli. The implications of the results both for understanding deficits characteristic of autistic children and for developing appropriate language training procedures are discussed.

Cross-setting generalization of manual signs to verbal instructions with severely retarded children.

This study assessed the effects of a procedure of transfer of stimulus control on the cross-setting generalization of manual signs with three severely retarded children. The procedure was designed in order to have the subjects perform appropriate signs to verbal instructions. The dependent variables consisted of manual sign responses at probe sessions in the classroom and on the ward to assess generalization of training across settings and persons, as well as the percentage correct verbal imitations of instructions used during training. The results, gathered within a multiple baseline design across responses show that: Performance of manual signs to verbal instructions generalized across settings, yet acquired signs did not facilitate S's production of the appropriate referent within a verbal imitation paradigm. The importance of choosing appropriate signs is emphasized.

Teaching complex language to autistic children

Abstract Although there is a growing technology for teaching autistic children to engage in verbal imitation, to begin with nouns, verbs and pronouns, and to construct simple sentences, there is a continuing need for investigations of procedures that may be used to teach additional language skills. This article reports research conducted in a day school and treatment program for autistic children; the nine children who participated in these studies had acquired a basic set of language skills during the earlier stages of their treatment, but needed to develop more elaborate expressive speech. Thus, experiments were designed to evaluate the effectiveness of three language-programming strategies. Experiment I examined the effects of a procedure for shaping successively more complex utterances that ultimately included nouns, size/shape and color descriptors and verbs, and assessed generalization across a new teacher, a new classroom, a new set of materials and a new response modality (handwriting). Experiment 2 investigated a procedure for teaching children to answer wh-concept questions (what, why and how), and assessed a strategy for programming response generalization to untrained stimulus materials. Finally, Experiment 3 examined the effects of a program designed to teach children to report on temporally-remote (past) events, using “paragraphic” speech. All three investigations were conducted in children's regular classroom or home environments, during their regularly-scheduled activities, and using materials that are normally available in special education settings and homes. All three language programs were demonstrated to be effective in helping autistic children acquire more complex and sophisticated language skills needed to support their progress toward normalized social participation.