Receptive and Expressive Language In Students with Autism

 

Some students with autism have challenges with receptive and/or expressive language skill acquisition. Understanding how this affects the dynamics of communication can be crucial when teaching or interacting with individuals on the spectrum. While every person with autism is unique, here are some guidelines when it comes to this:

• “If I don’t respond, it doesn’t mean I don’t understand.”

Making the assumption that ‘not responding’ indicates ‘not understanding’ can be misleading. If an individual has challenges with expressive language, he may very well understand what you are asking him, or stating to him, or saying in his presence.  

• “It doesn’t help when you say it louder.”

Barring any auditory challenges the individual may have, speaking in a louder tone of voice will most likely not illicit a different response from them – and it is usually considered inappropriate.

• “I can say, “Thank you” in different ways.”

If you know someone with autism who has expressive language challenges, you will learn to pick-up on their more subtle responses. Work on helping him develop more language, but also learn to understand and accept these communications as well.       

• “I may be able to…if you ask me the right way.”

Many skills and activities don’t require a verbal response if the learner is directed in the appropriate manner. When working on Math, for instance, asking a student, “Show me which number is larger” or “Write down the larger number” can be more effective than, “Tell me which number is larger.” The latter way of asking requires a verbal response from the student, which could be much more difficult than the math problem itself.

While it is important to work on developing a student’s receptive and expressive language skills, it is also important to understand, and react appropriately to, the individual’s current ability level in this area. There is always a fine line between requiring language from a student (to help them develop the skill) and accepting their approximations. Knowing how to balance these considerations will create a more effective teaching environment and help avoid frustration.

What Exactly Are You Reinforcing?

Positive reinforcement has become a very popular phrase nowadays. And why not, “When I use positive reinforcement I’m positively impacting someone’s behavior.” Isn’t that right? Well, not exactly. The ‘positive’ in positive reinforcement is more of an indicator that a certain behavior increased – not necessarily that it is good or beneficial in nature, per se. In Behaviorism, ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ hold no value judgments – much like a doctor’s test results being negative for an illness is actually a good outcome.

Many times, we are positively reinforcing actions or responses without even consciously realizing it. For instance, a co-worker we’ll call Mark once shared a situation in which no matter how hard he tried; his relationship with a fellow staff member remained lukewarm at best. On several occasions, Mark felt rebuffed and as if his co-worker was not-so-politely dismissing him. After a few days had passed, Mark finally confronted him about it. As it turns out, there was an unusually high workload placed on his colleague with a deadline looming. The coworker’s antisocial behavior was positively reinforcing the behavior of avoidance by his fellow staff. In this example, it’s important to understand that the behavior of avoidance was being positively reinforced. In effect, Mark was being punished when he approached him and the busy co-worker’s behavior was reinforced by having more time to complete the task.

Other times, our attempts at positive reinforcement (for a desired response) can actually have the opposite effect. Take for instance a parent with a goal of getting their son or daughter to lose weight. After a serious discussion with them on the importance of healthy eating and exercise, several other actions are taken; special diets, books, websites, activities. Unfortunately, this results in a 15 pound increase in the child’s weight! The truth is that the only thing we can say with certainty here is that these attempts have not positively reinforced weight loss for this individual (and in fact may have positively reinforced weigh gain instead!)

So, how do you know if your attempts at positively reinforcing a desired behavior are working? It sounds simple, but if the behavior you are seeking to increase actually does increase – then that behavior is being reinforced. This, of course swings both ways, since an undesired behavior can be positively reinforced as well. The best approach to this is to make an honest assessment of the behavior pattern of your student, co-worker or family member. If the individual’s behavior increases in frequency or intensity, then it is possible that you are inadvertently, positively reinforcing it.

5 Reasons to Add the Piano to your Child's IEP

IEPs or Individualized Education Plans often focus on the much needed, core educational requirements of your child with special needs. It is very important that you are part of this process and provide your input as well. Since the piano is both fun and educational it can be a great way to motivate your child with autism. Here are five reasons to consider this:

1)     It’s Fun!

      Adding a less rigid and ultimately more expressive activity to your child’s IEP can really motivate them. While there are basics to learn, music is about exploration and expression.

2)     It’s Educational!

      Playing the piano requires you to focus. This time spent attending to instructional material can gradually be increased and benefit other educational programs. When your child learns to read music this also closely mirrors other skills associated with classical Reading and Writing programs.

3)     It promotes inclusion.

      While most IEPs and all public education programs include more traditional subjects such as Math, choosing to play the piano is not as common. This allows your child to form relationships with other music-minded peers and share something in common. Creating these opportunities by finding social groups and/or musical activities such as performances can help develop these connections.

4)     It helps with generalization.

      The piano, much like traditional educational subjects, needs to be practiced and reviewed at home as well. Students with autism often have challenges associated with generalization. Adding another skill that can be brought home and developed; in a new environment, using different materials (i.e. another keyboard/piano) and taught by a different teacher, all help to promote your child’s ability to generalize what they learn.       

5)     It develops fine-motor skills.

      Writing skills and many general life skills require a certain degree of fine-motor development. Learning to play the piano can gradually increase these skills by introducing concepts such as correct fingering and playing with both hands. When using ABA style instruction, these techniques can be broken down and ‘errorlessly’ introduced. While learning the basics of the piano is often straight-forward, the difficulty level can grow with your child and provide endless challenges and opportunities for fine-motor development.   

      The piano can offer all of these things and even though some students will not continue lessons into adulthood, it may open doors to other fun and challenging areas. Many of our students begin to explore singing or other instruments after being introduced to the piano. Exploring the possibilities of having your school include the piano in your child’s IEP can jump-start a discussion on exploring what artistic endeavors may be in their future!  

By J. Young

IPI Video

How to Create a Token Board

Token Boards are a great way to motivate someone and clearly display what it is that they are working for and how close they are to getting it. While token boards are commonly used to motivate younger, typical students and some students with autism, the complexity and uniqueness of your token board is only limited by your imagination. The more individualized it is to the student, the more likely it is that the person will respond to the system.

The Basics

All token boards follow a similar pattern and can be divided into three sections:

• The reinforcer section
• The ‘tokens to earn’ section
• The ‘tokens earned’ section

            The reinforcer section represents what the student will receive after he earns all of the tokens. This can be an image of an item, a certain amount of time to access something, an activity, a choice, music or time with a friend. The tokens to earn section contains the pieces or tokens which each represent a step toward the reinforcer. The tokens earned section should be clearly divided from the ‘tokens to earn section’ to make it clear how much progress has been made or needs to be made before the reinforcer becomes available to them.

Choosing the Materials

           

            What material you choose to construct your token board out of depends on what the student you are motivating likes. For instance, one of my students really liked dinosaurs.  After finding an appropriate dinosaur image, I enlarged it, glued it to some cardboard and attached small Velcro pieces to the back of each piece. When the pieces are jumbled it was even more fun for him to earn these pieces to find out what dinosaur it was! Sometimes, the actual reinforcer (or part of it) can act as the token board itself! I usually try to build my token boards to last because you never know when you may use it again or change it slightly to use with another student. Lamination is a good way to create long-lasting boards and tokens that can grow with all of your students. Otherwise, your materials should be constructed out of rigid material such as cardboard or heavy weight paper.  

The Time-frame and Ground Rules

            How often you deliver a token depends on the behavior of the recipient. Generally, there should be a higher frequency of token delivery for appropriate behavior and task completion. Also, there is no rule which states that you have to only deliver one token at a time! Once the tokens become significant, giving multiple tokens for outstanding behavior is a great example of differential reinforcement and can be highly motivating.  Removing a token (as a response cost) for certain behaviors can also be a crucial way to make it clear that some behavior is unacceptable. If the student does not consider these tokens significant yet, though, these techniques will have little consequence.

Change it up!

          Finally, don’t forget to change your token board periodically and adjust it to your students’ current preferences. Last month’s favorite animated movie can quickly lose significance and be replaced by his, now favorite TV show. The easiest way to find this out is by simply observing what your student chooses to read, play with or talk about and steer the board to those topics. Sometimes, if you have created a ‘universal’ type board, you can easily change the tokens to reflect these changes and keep the board fresh and engaging for them.

Errorless Teaching - Prompting Toward Independence

Consider a student who is first learning the alphabet. This is commonly done by pairing syllables to written letters and helping the student independently identify and associate these concepts with each other. As a teacher or a parent, how would you start this process? Would you lay out all the letters in the alphabet and ask them to find an F? Of course you wouldn’t! Most teachers would begin by isolating a single letter and just teaching to that concept, and then eventually move the student on. This is an example of reducing the amount of distractors.  A distractor is anything which does not have to do with the current teaching element being addressed. Distractions are part of everyday life and are often part of the teaching process – but initially, many students will benefit from the removal of these distractors to allow them to be successful, gain confidence and be reinforced. Reducing the amount of distractors is the first step, but what if a student is still not successful?

            If a student makes a mistake this implies a few things; he may not comprehend the material, he might not yet be independently able to complete the task and/or there could be behavioral challenges which are inhibiting his response. The ‘and/or’ in the previous sentence is important because students with autism and other learning challenges often have a complicated combination of challenges which may be affecting his/her responses. Let’s consider behavioral challenges. A student may respond incorrectly because; she could be prompt-dependent, i.e. doesn’t respond independently, she may be seeking attention since she has received more attention in the past for incorrect responses, she may be frustrated, distracted, hungry, excited, tired, bored or simply testing the teacher. Since there a lot of ‘may’s’ and ‘could be’s’ in a discussion on why a learner is not being successful - errorless teaching procedures reduce the chance that the previous myriad of possible variables will negatively effect the student’s response. By minimizing the chance that the student will respond incorrectly (at first) the teacher is building a foundation of correct responses for the student to draw from. This also allows the teacher to initially reinforce the student for these prompted responses which will help him associate learning with fun and enjoyable situations.

            Students can be prompted by changing their environment, i.e. in the above example of distractor reduction, or by physically helping the student to respond correctly. Physically prompting, in respect to errorless teaching, would be accomplished by completing the desired response with the student by having them respond correctly. For example, when teaching to colors, a teacher could request, “Please point to red”. The student would be assisted by physically helping him point to the red item in an appropriate amount of time. The teacher would then reinforce that prompted response. Without this level of reinforcement, a student will be less likely to respond independently in the future when he/she is not being prompted. This form of prompting works well with certain activities but other skills like language and verbalization cannot be physically prompted in this manner. Here, repetition and the modeling of correct responses are more effective.  Physically prompting a student is, of course, not sustainable in the long term because the goal of most skills is for a learner to independently complete an activity. At what point, though, does a teacher know when to stop or begin to stop prompting a student in this manner? After using errorless teaching procedures for an appropriate period of time, teachers can analyze the amount of progress being made by removing the prompt and making the exact same demand. Based on the student’s response without being helped, the teacher can then determine whether more teaching trials are required or the prompts can be faded. The process and extent to which these prompts are faded is completely dependent on the student and his un-prompted responses. Reinforcing future attempts and/or independent responses is extremely important in the student’s long-term success and ability to sustain and generalize these skills.

               Learning a new language can sometimes be challenging. One way to help learn some of the names of everyday objects is to label the items in your room or house with the word in the other language. This is a form of errorless teaching since it (initially) eliminates the chance for incorrect responses. Not surprisingly, these items will not be labeled in such a manner when speaking with an individual using this other language; so these labels or prompts will have to eventually be removed. Prompts such as these can be difficult to fade if they become embedded in the learning process. Removing then as soon as possible, or systematically fading them over a relatively short period of time, will reduce your dependency on them and allow you to more independently recall the names. One way to begin to fade a prompt such as this is to cover a letter or part of the word with tape. When you are comfortable here you would cover more and more of the word until it is completely unreadable. These and other forms of errorless teaching procedures can be very helpful to all learners – but they are especially beneficial for students on the autism spectrum. The key points with all errorless teaching methods are; the subsequent fading of these prompts, providing adequate reinforcement and the goal of independence.

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