I DON’T KNOW
(IDK)
STARTED: 08/26/99
END DATE: 1/10/00 ßPROGRAM EVOLVED INTO THE “Getting information” program.
Purpose of the program: For Lukas to state when he knows something and when he doesn’t. Original probe found that he would not say this. He would always try and give an answer rather than just say “I don’t know”. When our consultant probed it by holding up an object, he said “you tell me.” J
1. Sd1 I don’t know 08/26/99 8/30/99
2. Sd2 I don’t know, what is it? 09/01/99 09/26/99
3. Sd3 I don’t know, where is it? 10/10/99 10/27/99
4. Sd4 I don’t know, who is it? 10/10/99 10/24/99
5. Sd5 I don’t know wh discrim & 11/16/99 1/10/00ß
seek info
SD information:
Sd1: who/what is this? (and show the child an unknown item)
R1: I don’t know.
R2: I don’t know, what is it?
In the original program, we were suppose to start telling him the answer to the question once he said “what is it?” The only issue I had with this program was one of pragmatics. We were asking him and we knew the answer to the question. It is strange to do this. We didn’t model appropriate pragmatics of language very well. Looking back, we should have done it more in a “Guess what I have” type thing. Or we should have used an SD in the form of: Gee, do you know what this is? R1: I don’t know. Tutor: Me neither, lets go look it up on the Internet, etc. I then instructed the tutors to do this. We would show him an item (a corkscrew) and say “hey, what is this?” and he would respond, “I don’t know” to which the tutor would say “well, what can we pretend it is?” Thus, we ended up combining it into another program.
Sd1-Sd4 are done to get a specific response: what is it, who is it, where is it?
Sd5: is done to encourage him to seek out the answer to the information he doesn’t know.
The next step is to intermix all previously mastered targets and teach additional items:
Example:
Show Lukas a “thing” from a hardware store. Ask him what it is. The next question is to ask him something he knows like “what colour is this?” You want to make sure he is not rotely answering “I don’t know.” He must discriminate when he knows and when he doesn’t know something.
When this shows mastery, do this without any sort of visual stimuli:
What is a rose?
What is a baby sheep called?
What colour is my dog?
Before putting this in maintenance, work on more abstract questions. For example:
Whats my grandmothers name?
Where was I born?
In doing this program, our team decided to ditch the last two as separate SD’s. We automatically began inserting abstract questions into the first five Sds because Lukas did not have trouble with abstract thoughts and ideas. However, some children may. This is why you don’t see additional SD’s with “abstract questions” as the target. We also took this to “generalization” right away. This was done outside the therapy room in sessions. Tutors would actually take him to the hardware store, the grocery store, or the library and hit these targets.
Tutor Notes: This was a pretty smooth sailing program for us. We actually started it in random rotation within the first day of the program. There was one small note from our lead tutor:
Tutor: GG
Date: 10/18/00
Targets and % : Sd4: 4/4 Sd3 20% Sd 2 20% in Random Rotation
comment: he is not responding with the correct WH word example:
Hey Lukas, who is that?
Lukas: I don’t know, what is it?
USE AN INFLECTION PROMPT (ie, stress the WH word in the SD) as a
prompt.
*** remember that an item can not be considered mastered until all prompting is faded and it is done in random rotation, across two days, three consecutive sessions, two tutors, and at 90% or more.