The Great Verbal Behavior Discovery.
I feel that our Asking Questions, Wh discrimination, and Question Statement Question Program , and Statement-Statement Question Program , and statement multiple response programs all go together. They are an example of how language programming did not always produce a child who can run into a preschool and suddenly have wonderful conversations.
MIND YOU- THEY WERE NOT TOTALLY USELESS. They were useful to a point but… I was not satisfied that they accomplished was what they were meant to accomplish. I was frustrated. Our ABA team was also frustrated. We felt like we were spinning our wheels. Looking at target items sheet and our data books, one would wonder why we felt this way. Lukas easily mastered items. What was the problem? Why did I roll my eyes at the new language programming coming from the consultants? Why did my tutors all groan when we demonstrated the new programming?
The problem was that he was still “not right” as far as conversational language and this affected him socially. We maintained that social desire was not a problem for Lukas. Language was. His difficulty with social interactions was a result of his inability to freely communicate. Our consultants gave families the opportunities to hold a workshop at their centre when they held their monthly staff meetings. Instead of just having your consultant do a workshop, you could have all the centre’s consultants attend. I jumped on the opportunity because I wanted to let all the consultants know that this was NOT LANGUAGE TEACHING. CHILDREN DID NOT SPEAK THIS WAY. When we tried to test the “Question-Statement-Question” program with peers, they rarely EVER followed this pattern. There was little reinforcement for him to speak like this because half the time, he would ask the question and the peer would ignore him or worse, he would make a statement, and the peer wouldn’t bother to make a statement back! We were teaching Lukas to speak a certain way that might or might not be reinforcing to him in the real world.
I think that these programs became a good lesson in ABA for me. I started to blame ABA for the “hard to explain but something isn’t quite right” way that my child communicated. Of course, a common “opinion” from the consultants was that our reinforcement just sucked. (an opinion that is often true but also used as an excuse for consultants to use when they are not really sure what the problem is themselves!) I blamed ABA and they blamed our lack of reinforcement. Turns out that we were both right and both wrong.
This was a real lesson in ABA for us. I blamed ABA. In a way, I was right. We were incorrectly applying ABA. We reinforced Lukas to ask us questions he didn’t want to ask and he knew the answer to. Why were we doing this? The problem was not ABA. The problem was that we were stuck in a “traditional Lovaas programming.”.
The consultants were right. Reinforcement was the problem. However, it wasn’t that my tutors didn’t know how to make Lukas smile. It wasn’t “our” reinforcement that sucked but the REASON we reinforced was all wrong.
For Lukas, the “Lovaas style” approach didn’t take advantage of the very important principle of ABA- motivate the person. We reinforced him or motivated him to comply to a request, not learn to ask questions. Now mind, I am not slamming “traditional Lovaas”. Our programming was largely Lovaas based. Dr. Lovaas has done wonders in the field of autism and we all owe him a huge hooray! Lukas just needed something different. Teaching the mechanics of language is important. You do it all the time in foreign language classes. Language was becoming more aversive than a powerful took to get what you want. J
Just how do NT children learn to ask questions?
You don’t full verbal prompt a toddler to say “who is that?” while making him look at Daddy. Your toddler tends to learn from the modeling you do. How many times do we see mothers running around with the toddlers, asking their toddlers “what’s this?” in order to hear their toddler say the name of the toy or object.
A toddler will start doing the same thing as they explore a new toy room. They might pick up an object and look at their mother and say “Dis?” or “whatit?” The mother is then likely to model the appropriate question “What is that? That is a book.” The toddler first had the motivation to ask the question. That motivation comes from a variety of things: the desire to play with the new toy, the desire to engage mommy in a game, etc. He will learn the mechanics of a grammatically appropriate sentence later.
I think that we should have MOTIVATED Lukas to ask questions before we taught the mechanics of language. It is a wonder that we didn’t have more noncompliance during our drills (which we tended to have a nice amount of!!)
Perhaps it is possible to do both techniques ? Just because someone is motivated doesn’t mean they CAN. Perhaps once the motivation is clear, then you can go to more Lovaas style drills to work on mechanics and full sentences , etc.
Here is how we were instructed to teach Lukas to Ask Question
Asking questions:
Instructions:
Use an original set of cards to teach a question. Once he has mastered a question,
Use novel pictures and expect Lukas to use the questions in everday life.
*have Lukas ask several questions using the same picture: Where are they? Who
are they? What are they doing?
*Other questions you can add to the program:
Do you….? (want to play, like pizza)
Is it…..? (label person/location/etc)
*Use a model prompt to teach Lukas what to say: Here is an example:
Tutor to peer: Ask me a question.
Peer: What are you doing?
Tutor to Lukas: Ask me a question.
Lukas: What are you doing?
*Once Lukas learns a question, fade the SD “Ask me a question.” Prompt
him to ask questions spontaneously, fade the prompts as soon as possible.
So: Give child the card.
SD from Therapist: Ask me a question.
Child: what is it/who is it/where is it/
Response from Therapist: Answers the question.
Below is our data. Look closely
at the target items. REMEMBER, THINK
ABA.
Lukas already knew colours, shapes, and had a large object
vocabulary. Think how we were advised
to teach this. Lukas was to look at
pictures. We reinforced every correct response. He certainly wasn’t
reinforced by our tutor answering the question he asked. There was no internal reinforcement for
that. It had to be external. So..
what do you think happened to us?
I would not say that he suddenly began asking questions that he didn’t
know the answer to. Also, he started
asking us questions that he already knew the answer to just to… be talking or to please us. ACK!!
NOT GOOD. Also, lets face it
, It is kinda funny to tell
someone to
PROMPT another person to spontaneously act. J Our criteria for mastery is 90% or more
across two tutors, three sessions, two different days in Random Rotation. He mastered these items rather quickly
right? So wouldn’t you call it a
success? Well.
No. Some Traditionalists might
point out that you need to do this in generalization too. Well, we did. Looking at our tutor data sheets, you can see in the comments section that we did these things in
the firestation, park, grocery store, etc.
Yet, something was not
right. Lukas was still not “in” the
normal flow of things when talking and playing around. Lukas always, since the age of 2.5,
asked “where is X” with X
usually being his toys and occasionally a parent. However, that was one of the few questions he ever asked. He was still asking Where is X at 4.5 but
not much else. Why? BECAUSE IT WAS NATURALLY REINFORCING FOR HIM
TO ASK IT!! HIS TOY MATTERED AND SO YOU
BETCHA HE LEARNED TO ASK FOR IT!
Target item
|
Introduced |
Mastered |
|
1. What is he/she/it doing? |
9/16/99 |
9/20/99 |
|
2. What colour? |
9/16/99 |
9/21/99 |
|
3.What shape? |
9/16/99 |
9/27/99 |
|
4. Where is it? |
9/16/99 |
9/21/99 |
|
5. What is it? |
9/16/99 |
9/21/99 |
|
6. Who is it? |
10/4/99 |
10/26/99 |
|
7. What are doing? |
10/10/99 |
10/26/99 |
|
8. How are you? |
10/10/99 |
10/16/99 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Another program that was introduced in April 2000, at our request for more real language programming was Statement-Statement-Question. Lukas could already do “statement-statement” (mastered 10/26/99) so this was not a hard program for us to do:
Example:
Tutor: I like Hamburgers
Lukas: I like pizza. Do you like Pizza?
Introduced 4/21/00
Mastered 4/25/00
After a while, Lukas knew the drill. He can spot a “drill” a mile away. Sometimes we would say “I don’t like sauerkraut” or something to see if he would naturally talk about things he didn’t like. Lukas still knew the drill. Sometimes he would just say any old thing to get the drill over with. One example is an entry our more experienced tutor wrote on 5/21/00. Even though she did this in a naturalized environment (they were on an outing) he still knew it was a drill. In the comments section she wrote: “This is getting off track. I gave the SD “I don’t like X” and he responded appropriately but he told me that he didn’t like something I know he likes. He is just saying it to say it.
We were also then given this program. Again, it turned out exactly like the previous program.
Example:
Tutor: Do you like pizza (question)
Lukas: No (statement) I like hamburgers (statement.)
This was introduced 4/17/00 and mastered 4/22/00/ It only took
This long because my tutors were on vacation and we didn’t have as
Many therapists scheduled for the “across two tutors, three sessions, two
Days” rule of mastery.
Did Lukas suddenly start having long conversations? No.
Make a vague statement which Lukas can ask you about. Here is an example:
Tutor: I am going now.
Lukas: Where are you going?
Tutor: To the store.
Lukas: What store?
Tutor: The grocery store.
Lukas:What are you going to buy?
Tutor: some vegetables.
Lukas: What kind of vegetables.
Tutor: Carrots
Lukas : What else?
Tutor: peas.
Prompt Lukas to ask a specific question if he fails to do it on his own.
|
Target |
Introduced |
Mastered |
|
1. get Lukas to ask 1 question |
5/5/00 |
5/17/00 |
|
2. Get Lukas to ask 2 questions |
5/16/00 |
5/18/00 |
|
3. Get Lukas to Ask 3 questions |
5/16/00 |
5/18/00 |
|
4. Get Lukas to ask 4 questions |
5/18/00 |
6/12/00 |
**At
this point, I decided enough and forbade
my tutors from adding a target 5 of FIVE questions. I felt like this was enough and it certainly didn’t model an
appropriate conversation. Imagine if
Lukas made constant vague statements!
We would have a “making detailed statements” program set up for him!!!!
Lukas still wasn’t asking quite the number of questions in a normal, spontaneous environment. He was a chatterbox and talked ALL the time but didn’t ask very many questions…. WHY?
Take a look at
how we were teaching WH discrimination:
Think about it. WH questions are a part of Asking Questions. We tried to teach receptive understanding of WH questions after having taught “asking questions” in the above manner. Do you think we were successful? Lukas was a super lightening fast learner. But pay careful attention to how long it took us to move out of this program.
I know that overall, it looks like we were successful at first. I think the WH Discrim program shows how Asking Questions was not really successful. Think back again to normal children.
My twins did not learn to discriminate Wh questions in a receptive fashion first. They actually started asking questions first. They started asking the dreaded WHY question long before they ANSWERED why.
The basic instructions
(not word for word) give to us went like this:
Start with the
visual. Give Lukas a picture card and
ask “where is it?”
Move to the nonvisual
like “where is your dad?”
For WHY questions you
can show Lukas cause and effect cards and ask things like “why is she crying?”
Once you have masterd
this, try intermixing the SD’s:
Who is that?
Why is crying?
Where is she?
Gradually move to
nonvisuals.
|
Target Item |
Date Introduced |
Date Mastered |
|
1. Where |
12/26/99 |
1/19/00 |
|
2. Who |
1/11/00 |
2/10/00 |
|
3. Why |
3/3/00 |
3/10/00 |
|
4. why reversals |
3/24/00 |
3/30/00 |
|
5. When |
4/22/00 |
5/18/00 |
|
6. Intermix of 1-5
w/visuals |
5/31/00 |
6/21/00 |
|
7..TML prompt for
number 5 |
5/3/00 |
5/10/00 |
|
8. Intermix of 1-6 without visuals as a
theme. |
6/21/00 |
6/26/00 |
|
9.how do you |
9/4/00 |
10/10/00 |
|
10. How did |
9/4/00 |
10/10/00 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Now you should see that we did
move through these target items but there are a couple of problems. Number one,
there are gaps between the mastery of some targets and the introduction
of others. For example, between the
mastery of who and the introduction of why etc. This was because we were being given the information on when to
introduce targets “piece meal” (bit by very little bit) from our
consultant. We were often caught not
knowing what is next or what to probe for.
This did not change until our team did two things:
But what is not in here is the
fact that Lukas was still not asking many of the above questions
spontaneously. Why? HE understood it- when he felt like
listening (you will note quite a bit of noncompliance in our data sheets which
is another reason for the WH discrim targets taking so long for us to master.)
That is when we discovered a more verbal behavior approach. Lukas should have been asking questions he didn’t know the answer to. The reward or reinforcement should be paired directly to asking that question. Typically developing children do not learn wh questions receptively and then expressively. They often are asking “why” long before they learn to answer why. Our team was struggling to get Lukas to learn to discriminate wh words- which I now think was more from compliance than anything else. We finally succeeded when we changed our teaching methods.
(yes, if a child is failing, you need to change course!)
Anyway, I think it is important to remember what is age appropriate. Most WHEN questions are not mastered by typically developing children until 5-7 years of age.
So, that ought to be the last one.
I did some specific things for "when" which I got from the Teach Me Language Manual (a good thing for a Hyperlexic but to be honest, I would not buy it unless the child can read.) My consultant did not suggest TML. We used it for things like the calendar and for understanding When. We put the index cards marked : in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, at night in a row. We would then mix it up and have Lukas put it in order. After that, we began having him put cards with activities written on them underneath the appropriate “time” card. For instance:
IN THE MORNING IN THE EVENING At NIGHT
Brush teeth EAT DINNER TAKE A BATH
GO TO SCHOOL WATCH TV BRUSH TEETH
EAT BREAKFAST GO TO SLEEP
MAKE BED
I also backed off expecting him to spontaneously ask when , when I realised that my 5 year old was NOT asking WHY. In traditional lovaas, you work on the receptive first then the expressive. Well, we should not have been working on the receptive when, when our child wasn't asking "why do I have to come in? I don't wanna!" I also realized that I didn't like the way we were targeting it. We were telling him to ask us questions he already knew the answer to. (give child a card that might show a park and prompt him to ask "where is it?" ) well, that set us up for pragmatics issues. He began asking all sorts of questions he already knew the answer to. Talk about annoying! So, I sat down one night, and decided to change our approach. We did a mini program on the sly. We continued with the Lovaas style WH questions program but we had the tutors devote time to ASKING Wh questions.
We began by examining where the motivation was for our child to ask the questions. For instance, for the infamous "why" question, I would tell him "NO." anytime
he asked me something reasonable: Mom, can I have milk? The first two or three times, I IMMEDIATELY prompted him to ask "WHY?!" This is because a.) I wanted him to be successful right off the bat and b.) he can't mind read and shouldn't be expected to figure out what I wanted and c.) because it was rather unreasonable for me to say no to a reasonable request and I didn't want him upset.
I then immediately said something like "oh. youre right. I was just being lazy and didn't want to get up." He then got his milk. He was reinforced for asking the question WHY.
For many reasonable things I did this. I also might do something weird like sit in front of him and try and touchmy tongue to my nose while crossing my eyes. He caught on
to this quickly and would ask "why are you doing that?" I might pour blocks into his cereal bowl in the morning. J
For where, this was the most simple! Whenever we went somewhere he wanted to go (Wal-Mart, McDonalds, etc) I would park the car, get out , and start walking the opposite direction. The first few times, I immediately prompted him to ask where we were going because Wal-Mart was "that way". I would then say "oh! Sorry. I didn't see it" or some other silly excuse.
He caught on to this real quick. Previously, Lukas only asked where a toy was.. Sometimes, I would just order him to go to the car and not tell him where we were going. it took only a single prompt but he figured out how to ask why or where. Some kids need more prompting than what we did with Lukas. We were very fortunate in that Lukas picked up things quickly and we could lose the prompt after the first time or two.
Anyway, by pushing the expressive in such a manner, it seemed to help the receptive. He was more able to answer wh questions once he learned to ask them. We then moved to “themed” wh questions which would require him to discriminate the WH word rather than look for hidden clues in the question. For instance, if you asked “who is your friend” a child might answer correctly (Bobby) However, that doesn’t mean that he knew that WHO indicated a person. He might have heard “friend” and just connected the dots. By asking themed questions, it required Lukas to listen and discriminate:
For instance the bathroom:
Tutor: Where do you take a bath?
Child: in the evening.
Tutor: "No" Voice inflected prompt "where" or just prompt "say
In the bathroom.”
Child: In the bathroom.
Tutor: ya hog! Atta kid. (reinforcement of some sort)
Tutor: Whats in a bathroom?
Child: a sink
Tutor: Wow! Great answer. I have a small spider that is
going to crawl up your sleeve! "tickle child" (reinforcement)
Tutor: Where is a sink?
Child: in the bathroom.
Tutor: (reinforce child) whats a sink for?
Child: washing your hands
Tutor: (reinforce) Why do you wash your hands?
Child: Because they are dirty?
Tutor: (reinforce) when do you take a bath?
Child: at night/when I am dirty/etc
tutor: (reinforce)
You can do this for other themes like school: who do you play with at school? Where do you go to school? Why do you go to school? What do you do at school? When do you go to school You can then also check this by doing wh reversals: You learn at ____________. In the morning, you go to ______________________.
I once read an excellent post on the DTT-NET list on wh questions and I went ahead and cut and pasted it here:
[quote from ABAQueen@aol.com from the DTT-NET list]
What:
1. Have therapist come in with a bag of things that the child would
like. Therapist says..Wow look what I have. Prompt child to say
What is it?/What is in there? and then tell them the item name and
give it to them. We also would come in with a bag and start pulling
things out (small candy,etc) and prompt What is in there?
2. One child worshipped MacDonald's and I got new happy meal boxes
and we put toys in there and he would say What did I get? (We did
this when they were giving out those Hello kitty things b.c he loved
then!)
3. Went to Toys R us and told child you can buy one thing and
prompted What can I buy?
4. I worked with a child who loved to draw and would ask me to draw
things..I would draw the wrong thing and prompted what is that?
5. Have small items in a Tupperware container and shake the
box..Prompt What is in there?
6. While in therapy I would tell the mom to make a loud noise
outside
the door and prompt what was that? ( This child loved to know the
names of noises, thunder, animal sounds.etc)
7. Go thru cards asking the child What is it? (child answers) Come
to an item they do not know and prompt What is it? and tell them.
(Be careful if your child knows I do not know b.c they will say
that!)
Where:
1. Hide things and tell the child to get them (make sure they are
items needed for something reinforcing to that child) we have done
shoes (to go outside), art stuff, food, toys. I would say go get
your shoes. The child walks over to the place where they are
normally and you prompted Where are my shoes? Therapist say oh they
are upstairs.
2. Child ask for item and I had no idea where it was so I said go
ask Mommy..Where is my glue?
3. Give the child candy in a cup (one at a time). Give 3 or so
pieces that way and then give them an empty cup. Prompt Where is my
candy?
4. Move things around that you know they will want..( I work with
one child who had all his beanie babies moved) and we prompted Where is
-------? and gave him the location
5. End an activity with no warning and prompt where are we going?
Make sure the answer is something more reinforcing...(ex: Leaving a
puzzle to go outside)
Why:
1. Child is doing something reinforcing (playing computer). Turn it
off and prompt Why did you do that? the answer would be so we can
go to McDonald's. (The answer needs to be something more reinforcing
then what they were doing)
2. I worked with a child who was very into emotions so the therapist
would pretend to cry and prompt why are you crying. (this only
worked b.c he cared why people felt a certain way)
3. I would tell a child we are going to Toys R Us and then pull into
the Walmart parking lot. As soon as I saw him start to think what
is going on I would prompt Why are we going here? (The answer was I
was just kidding we are going to Toys R Us ) This kind of back fired
b.c he would then say “Are you kidding whenever I attempted to do anything odd :)
4. Tell the child time to eat and put a shoe on their plate. Prompt
Why did you do that. (or Where is my food)
5. Tell the child I am going to MacDonald's with the sibling and
prompt Why can't I go? then say you can go.
6. Change things in the house (hang Pooh from the fan) and prompt
Why is pooh there?
7. Change things around and prompt Why is my ____ gone? (We moved a
child's bed (it was a toddler one) and he was like I have no bed top
sleep so we prompted Why is my bed gone?)
[end quote from ABAQueen@Aol.com DTT-NET list]
When we
started teaching “asking questions” by motivating him to want to ask the
question, he started! IT was amazing! It only took a week!!
Then he was suddenly asking real questions that he wanted to know the
answer to BECAUSE HE WANTED TO KNOW!
It is pretty amazing to me that changing our teaching method worked in
such a short time. We would learn to
handle syntax later, in another program.
But for now, Lukas finally learned why he should ask a question. It is amazing to look at how when our tutors
targeted him asking Wh questions in a more naturalized way by setting up
situations like the ones described above,
the number of “not listening” or
“didn’t comply” was considerably less than when we did a traditional “drill”.
Lukas started spontaneously asking questions because… he wanted to.
Do I think the Lovaas style drills were a waste of time? No. Lukas still learns language like most learn a foreign language. The drills were useful for teaching exact grammatical structures, etc. Also, if you handed him a stack of cards and told him to “ask me questions as fast as you can” it gave him a good chance to practice coming up with questions as fast as possible (fluency for which WH word to use).
As for my consultants… it isn’t their fault. They were doing what they were taught to do. Luckily, 2.5 years later, they have changed the way the do some of their language programming and are no longer PURE traditional Lovaas (they aren’t verbal behavior consultants either They are just stealing the best from both sides. J…