Date of Defense

4-23-2018

Date of Graduation

4-2018

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Richard Malott

Second Advisor

Kelly Kohler

Keywords

verbal, sharing, waiting, autism, delay

Abstract

The goal of this thesis was to create and implement an intervention that used errorless teaching and focused on increasing a sharing and waiting response for a student who had a verbal delay diagnosis. The two students involved in the project were both two-year-olds who attended an early childhood special education (ECSE) classroom with other preschool-aged children who had similar diagnoses. A single-subject simple baseline design was used and involved several phases designed with multiple responses to show the effectiveness of icons to facilitate sharing among two non-verbal students. Each response was prompted (when necessary) and they were all reinforced independently; phase change criteria were based on the completion of the entire chain of responses. At the end of the intervention, one student could independently complete the response chain, could wait for up to 30 seconds for a toy, and displayed appropriate turn-taking with peers. The other student demonstrated some barriers to learning and was not able to complete the procedure to mastery. Play skills are important for a developing child’s repertoire, because play provides many learning opportunities for social interaction. Sharing and turn taking are examples of appropriate play skills, and serve as a great focus when teaching prerequisites for playing. Implementing this errorless-learning sharing intervention for children with verbal delays could prove very effective.

Access Setting

Honors Thesis-Open Access

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