Teaching a child with autism to request help only when needed

Purpose Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) or other developmental disabilities are often reported to have challenges in well generalizing the newly learned communicative skills such as requesting help. Not requesting help when it is needed can hinder engagement and learning, whereas requesting help could also be socially inappropriate. This paper aims to offer a demonstration of applying general case instruction to teach a young child diagnosed with ASD to request help only when needed while concurrently increasing the child’s independence in task completion. Design/methodology/approach The demonstration adopted within-participant AB designs for one 5-year-old boy with ASD, with data collected across three tasks targeted for intervention and the other three tasks targeted for generalization probes throughout both the baseline and intervention phases. Dependent measures consisted of independent help request and independent task completion. Visual analysis was used to describe the results. Findings Results showed that the child with ASD learned to ask for help on difficult educational activities, while concurrently increasing his independence on these tasks; generalized the skill of requesting help by asking for help when he encountered other challenging novel tasks; and independently completed easy educational activities without requesting help. Originality/value The findings from this study may add to the limited literature that explored the generalization performance across tasks/activities in young learners with ASD, while demonstrating the feasibility of designing and applying general case instruction framework to enhance generalization performance for one individual learner.

Promoting Conditional Use of Communication Skills for Learners With Complex Communication Needs: A Tutorial

Purpose Conditional use of communication skills refers to the ability of a learner to appropriately generalize and discriminate when, where, and how to communicate based on constant variation and shifts in environmental cues. Method We describe discrimination and generalization challenges encountered by learners with complex communication needs and ways in which these challenges are fostered through traditional communication intervention programming. We address arrangements in instruction that maximize the probability of learners acquiring the conditional use of new vocabulary and the modest instructional technology implemented when planning for generalization. Results We propose establishing well-discriminated and generalized use of new vocabulary items through the application of a general case instruction framework to communication intervention programming. Conclusion We provide intervention methodology, including intervention steps for general case instruction, a plethora of functional examples, and graphic displays to assess and intervene to promote conditional use of communication skills for learners with complex communication needs.

Using General-Case Instruction to Teach Spontaneous and Generalized Requests for Assistance to Learners with Severe Disabilities

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of general-case instruction on spontaneous and generalized requests for assistance by three adolescents with severe disabilities. The findings support the efficacy of the general-case approach in relation to using a single example to teach requests for help. The distinguishing aspect of the general-case phase was the variation in stimulus conditions that occurred across teaching opportunities. Results indicated that general-case instruction produced generalized requests for assistance with two of the three learners. The implications for using general-case procedures for teaching communicative interactions are discussed and future research areas are proposed.

The Application of General-Case Instruction to the Requesting Repertoires of Learners with Severe Disabilities

General-case instruction has contributed substantially to the improvement of generalized responding by learners with severe disabilities. Although these procedures have been used with success across a wide variety of behaviors (e.g., street crossing, dressing, grocery store purchasing), applications of these procedures to communicative behaviors are lacking. This paper proposes an application of the stimulus-control features of the general-case model to enhance the communicative behavior of learners with severe disabilities. Specifically, the relationship between stimulus control and the pragmatic function of requesting is elaborated. Two examples of the general-case process for specifying the range of relevant stimulus and response variations within instructional, or communicative, universes are offered.

Use of General Case Instruction with Visually Impaired, Multiply Handicapped Adults in the Sorting of National Zip Codes

The purpose of the study was to determine whether the acquisition of independent sorting skills on a representative sample of the first two digits in national zip codes (zip code prefixes) results in generalized independent sorting of all 100 national zip code prefixes. It was found that two of the three visually impaired, mentally retarded subjects demonstrated improved generalized performance on probes of their nontrained ability to sort 100 national zip code prefixes during and following instruction on 9 representative prefixes.