Comparison of echoic teaching methods

Document Type

Thesis

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Degree

M.S. Applied Behavior Analysis

Date Completed

2014

First Committee Member

Ahearn, William

Second Committee Member

N/A

Third Committee Member

N/A

Abstract

"Many individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present with marked delays or deficits in language development including echoic behavior. The efficacy of several echoic teaching strategies has been empirically evaluated with persons diagnosed with ASD including: vocaJ imitation training, the mand-model procedure, and stimulus-stimulus pairing. The current study aimed to compare the relative efficacy of these teaching strategies, and to use the most effective teaching strategy to train any target sounds that were not acquired or decreased in frequency a a result of initial training. A within subjects adapted alternating treatments design was used (Wole ry, Bailey, & Sugai, 1988). The participants were 2 boys diagnosed with ASD who had limited echoic repertoires. Both vocal imjtation training and the mand-procedure resulted in increased echoic behavior. The stimulus-stimulus pairing condition was effective in increasing the echoic behavior for one participant in the first comparison but not in the second comparison, and had no effect on the echoic behavior of the other participant. Additionally, vocal imitation training and the mand-model procedure successfully increased vocalizations that were not acquired via stimulus-stimulus pairing. The current study offers a method to comprehensively compare and determine the relative effects of three echoic teaching strategies as well provides additional evidence for the efficacy of both vocaJ imitation and mand-model training."

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