Discrimination Training

As I discussed under “Social Stories- Not always the answer”, we did not feel happy with the way that autism resources taught social skills and social behavior. Since social behavior is NOT always black and white, we felt that Lukas needed a way to learn what was and wasn’t okay, based upon the situation. This involves a variety of skills from being able to read body language to observational learning. For those little things that just weren’t clicking with him and fell through the cracks, we put it into discrimination training. This program came from a variety of sources. The main person was our consultant. She had also spoken with Michael Fabrizio[1] and had come up with some suggestions. The idea was to not teach rules but teach discrimination of possible rules.

The General Steps of Discrimination Training went like this:

Think of the problem, “Are you boring the other person?”.

Sd1: Child watches two people and labels X (example: two tutors talk. One talks about snakes.. talks A LOT about snakes in very long detail. The other reacts. Turn to the child and say, “whats the problem?” The child should then label what the problem is. If the child is unable to answer such a broad question, you can try a more direct approach like “Is she boring her or not?”)

SD2: Child watches two people, labels X and answers the question “how did you know?” (child says, “she is being boring..” Tutor: How did you know? Child: because the other person isn’t talking much and is looking away a lot.?” ** be sure that you aren’t always bored… Have one tutor talk about snakes for a LONG time and have the other tutor show she is bored. Another time, have the tutor REALLY interested or even somewhat interested. Some people MIGHT be interested in snakes while others may not. You need to teach him to discriminate when it is, and isn’t okay.)

SD3: Child labels whether or not the “X” tutor responded appropriately or not appropriately. (ie, the snake tutor sees the other person acting bored and she then says “Oh C’mon. Don’t be bored.” And then continues to talk about snakes. Child should say “that she responded in a bad way.” Another time, have the snake tutor notice the bored tutor and have the snake tutor say “hey, do you like snakes?” The child should say “this is a good way to respond” Maybe another time have the snake tutor make a closing statement about snakes and then ask a general question about what pets the other tutor has.)

SD4: Have CHILD SHOW the proper way to respond to X

Say to the child, show me the right way to respond if you think I am bored in a conversation. Child shows a VARIETY of responses that a person can have when they realize they are boring another person. DO NOT LET THE CHILD GET AWAY WITH LEARNING AND SHOWING ONLY ONE RESPONSE!!!)

SD5: Child shows WRONG way to respond to X. (have the child pretend to ignore you and continue to blab on and on. Let the child come up with a variety of inappropriate responses. ) **Lukas LOVED doing this. This was highly reinforcing to him. How often do we ask a child to do something they shouldn’t do?! Believe it or not, it made him more aware.

Target	Intro	Sd1 mastery	Sd2 Mastery	Sd3 Mastery	Sd4 mastery	Sd5 mastery
1. Do you make sense or not make sense?	3/6/01	3/30/01	3/30/01	5/14/01	5/14/01	5/14/01
2. Is he pretending without the peer realizing it?	4/10/01	5/3/01	5/3/01	5/3/01	5/3/01	5/3/01
3. Is it okay to talk to yourself now?	4/18/01	5/09/01	5/14/01	5/14/01	5/14/01	5/14/01
4. Good fidget or a bad fidget	5/7/01	6/8/01	6/8/01	6/8/01	6/8/01	6/8/01
5. Talking too loud?	6/8/01	6/25/01	6/25/01	6/25/01	6/25/01	6/25/01
6. Using “your” voice?	6/8/01	6/25/01	7/19/01	7/19/01	7/19/01	7/19/01
7. A good topic or a bad topic to bring up with a stranger?	6/14/01	6/25/01	10/01/01	10/01/01	10/01/01	10/01/01
8. Good group of peers to try and play with or bad?	10/01/01	10/30/01	10/30/01	10/30/01	10/30/01	10/30/01
9. Something you should tell in secret versus out loud	11/01	11/01	11/01	11/01	11/01	11/01
10. Was this an accident or not an accident?	2/18/02	3/4/02	3/4/02	3/4/02	3/4/02	3/4/02

All of these targets were things that the tutors and I observed him having issues with. This is not a list that all children should have to work on. One needs to look at their child and look for something that is not a “black and white rule”. For instance, YOU NEVER PLAY WITH MATCHES. That is a black and white rule. But wait… do you never talk about geology, ever? What if the other person is interested and asking questions? YOU NEVER SPIT ON PEOPLE. But, do you never “hock a noogie?” ever???? Is there never an appropriate time and place to do this? I think there is. J What about talking to yourself? Do you NEVER do this? We would all be crazy if this was true. What about when you are working on your taxes at home? Can you talk to yourself then? What about on the subway? Unless you want to equip your child with a Palm Pilot and have him wade through literally thousands of possible rules, discrimination training is essential.

Our data reflects that he needed initial prompting when we began this program. We also had trouble with tutors being way too predictable once he caught on. For instance, if you had a target like “is the other person interested or not interested?” you might have to literally fall out of your chair and pretend to have fallen asleep. Over time, though… you need to become less obvious in your acting skills. You might even have a tutor look at him while he speaks and make some paralanguage (ie uh-huh) but not asking any questions or making ANY comments and not really making any sort of real facial expression. People aren’t always rude in expressing their boredom and you need to make sure that the tutors learn to act in less obvious manners once the child learns the ropes. We also had to watch for rote answers from Lukas. This meant that we had to vary the ways that conveyed whether or not something was “x”. Don’t ALWAYS have the tutors “do it wrong”. Have them do it right too! He needs to learn to discriminate between the two. Make sure you aren’t always doing a “pattern” either: right way, wrong way, right way, wrong way…. Try and sneak in less obvious drills to see if the child can catch it when they don’t know they are suppose to “catch” something. One way is to see how a peer date goes and see if it pops up. Our tutors often used their boyfriends and roommates to “test” for generalization.