Generalization across Modalities of Expressive and Receptive Language Acquisition through the Use of Multiple Exemplar Training and Errorless Teaching
Abstract
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) tend to display deficits with
language acquisition and generalization of language skills after acquisition.
Discrete trial teaching (DTT) includes general procedures used to teach language
acquisition skills (such as receptive and expressive language) to children with
ASD. Multiple exemplar teaching (MET) is a specialized type of DTT that
includes multiple discriminative stimuli used during teaching trials, as opposed to
only one target during the initial teaching. This present study assessed the efficacy
of a general DTT procedure and MET for acquisition and generalization of two
modalities of language skills: receptive and expressive. Goals of the study
included determining (1) whether DTT or MET produced more efficient teaching
of language acquisition skills, (2) which order the modalities should be taught,
and (3) the modality for the greater propensity for generalization. In general,
therapists taught individuals a target in one modality and then tested for generalization in the untrained modality, across all individuals with both teaching
procedures. Results suggested that both teaching procedures readily produced
acquisition of targets, and that generalization across modalities was idiosyncratic
across participants. For all three participants, expressive targets generalized to
receptive targets. Receptive targets generalized to expressive targets for two of the
participants. For the one participant for whom generalization was not evident in
the expressive modality, the target was taught until mastery criteria were met.