Date of Defense

12-8-2010

Department

Psychology

Keywords

autism

Abstract

The purpose of the study "Using LED Lights as Prompts to Teach Receptive Identification to Preschool Children with Autism" is to implement a different prompting procedure than traditional least-to-most prompting procedures in teaching. One prompting procedure commonly used in discrete trial training classrooms involves least-to-most prompting in the form of gestural and physical prompts to guide children to make correct responses during teaching procedures. To specifically teach receptive identification skills, an apparatus with LED lights was used as a prompting device to vary light intensities on stimuli that the child will choose from. This alternate method of prompting may enable children to acquire the skill to discriminate between stimuli in less time and with more accuracy. The LED lights spotlight the stimuli presented and fade in stages, ranging from all stimuli illuminated to one stimulus illuminated, depending on the number of prompts needed to reduce attention paid to extraneous elements in the environment. A multiple baseline design was implemented with a preschool child with autism to see the effects of using this LED lighting as a prompt to teach the receptive identification skill. In each baseline phase, the task was presented to the child; however no prompting occurred and only correct responses resulted in reinforcement. Baseline data was assessed against the intervention data to observe any changes in incorrect or correct responses. Data was analyzed by reviewing videotapes of the sessions and recording the number of correct and incorrect responses made by the child, along with the specific object stated by the tutor. With the LED apparatus used to prompt the child, the data tracked the child's progress in learning to identify target objects in the receptive identification procedure.

Comments

Principal Investigator: Stephanie M. Peterson

Student Investigators: Allison Pavlicek, Nicole Henrikson

Access Setting

Honors Thesis-Open Access

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