DEFINITION OF TERMS

A number of specific terms are used within the EIBI research literature and its curriculum manuals, but authors differ in the ways that these terms are used. For example, different terms may be used synonymously to refer to the same behaviours and contingencies, and identical terms may be used to refer to different behaviours and contingencies. For consistency and clarity of exposition, a definitional summary of commonly used terms is provided below.

4.3.1 Curricula and Curricular Domains

Although no commonality of terminology exists across published curricula, each is

nevertheless organised around a three-part hierarchy. At the most general level is a book or manual (i.e., the “curriculum”), which is divided into subordinate categories that will subsequently be referred to as “curricular domains”. Each curricular domain is composed of specific, individual, “programmes”.

61 4.3.2 Programmes

A “programme” (Leaf & McEachin, 1999; Lovaas, 2003; Taylor & McDonough, 1996; also referred to as a “task” by Partington & Sundberg, 1998) is a term used to describe different behaviours, or sets of behaviours, within a curriculum that a learner is expected to acquire during the course of EIBI. Operationally, these terms describe the S^Ds, materials, prompts, and teaching procedures employed by a teacher in specific teaching situations, in

combination with the expected responses produced by a learner in those situations. For example, to teach a learner to imitate the actions of a model, the teacher might introduce a

“Non-verbal Imitation” programme (Lovaas, 1981/2003), or, to teach visual-visual match-to-sample, an “Identical Matching” programme might be used (Taylor & McDonough, 1996).

4.3.3 Items

An “item” (Leaf & McEachin, 1999; also referred to as a “S^D” by Lovaas, 2003) is a specific behaviour to be established within a programme. For example, items in an “Object

Manipulation” programme might include “ringing bell”, “shaking tambourine”, and “pulling lever” (Leaf & McEachin, 1999), and items in a “Receptive Colours” programme might include appropriate selection of a blue, green, or black swatches in response to a teacher’s individual verbal S^Ds (Partington & Sundberg, 1998).

4.3.4 Learning Objectives and Outcomes

Although not used in any published curricula, the terms “learning objective” and “learning outcome” will be used during this chapter to describe the changes in a learner’s behaviour that individual programmes are put in place to achieve, and the changes in a learner’s behaviour resulting from implementation of those programmes, respectively. For example, the learning objective for an “Object Imitation” programme would be that a child imitates a specified number of actions relating to specific objects modelled by an adult, with the learning outcome that the child masters the generalised skill of imitating actions involving objects.

4.3.5 Mastery and Mastery Criteria

A “mastery criterion” is a threshold that determines the point at which a learner has become able to demonstrate a given behaviour, or set of behaviours, at a specified level of accuracy (i.e., when a behaviour, or set of behaviours, has been “mastered”). Within EIBI

interventions, mastery criteria can apply to individual items, or to programmes. In practical terms, therefore, an “item mastery criterion” serves to answer the teacher’s question, “When

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can I tell that a specific behaviour has been reliably established?” and a “programme mastery criterion” serves to answer the teacher’s question, “When is it appropriate to terminate a specific programme?”.

4.3.6 Discrete-trial Training

Discrete-trial training (DTT) provides a primary instructional method across all published curricula described in Section 4.4, below, and has been shown to be effective in establishing a range of adaptive behaviours in children with autism, including those involved in verbal behaviour, academic, social, motor, self-help, and play (e.g., Eikeseth, 2008; Smith, 2001).

DTT is a highly-structured method of teaching based directly on the three-term contingency (Skinner, 1938) and is composed of “blocks” (i.e., sequences) of individual discrete-trials.

Each discrete-trial is, itself, composed of five parts (Koegel et al., 1977), ordered as follows:

1. Discriminative stimulus (S^D). The teacher presents a brief, clear instruction or question to the child (e.g., "do this" or "what is it?").

2. Prompt. Simultaneously with, or immediately following the S^D, the teacher carries out one of a number of actions (e.g., moving the child's hand, or modelling the response) to guide the child’s response. As the child’s accuracy of responding

increases, prompts will be faded until the child is able to respond appropriately to the S^D without prompting.

3. Response. The child engages in behaviour consequent to the teacher’s S^D. 4. Consequence. If the child’s response is appropriate to the given S^D, the teacher immediately provides reinforcement (e.g., praise, hugs, small bites of food, access to toys). If the child’s response is not appropriate, the teacher seeks to extinguish that response (e.g., by saying "No", looking away, and removing teaching materials).

5. Inter-trial interval. Subsequent to the consequence, the teacher pauses for between 1- and 5-s prior to presenting the S^D for the next discrete-trial in the block.

The organisation and content of DTT blocks are determined by learners’ abilities and their learning objectives within specific programmes. Three specific DTT teaching procedures are commonly used within EIBI to teach novel behaviours, as follows.

4.3.6.1 Massed-trialling.

Massed-trialling is a technique developed by Lovaas (1981) for use as a first stage in teaching a novel item using DTT. Massed-trialling involves the repeated presentation of the same S^D for a specific item within a given DTT block and is terminated when a learner demonstrates

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accurate independent responding on 9 of 10 trials (Lovaas, 2003). It should be noted,

however, that some models of EIBI do not include use of massed-trialling at any point (e.g., Sundberg & Partington, 1998).

4.3.6.2 Discrimination Training.

Discrimination training refers to a specific set of teaching procedures that involve the gradual interspersal of two or more previously massed-trialled S^Ds within a given DTT block

(Lovaas, 1981/2003). Discrimination training is commonly used across EIBI interventions as a means of assisting learners to achieve reliable conditional discriminations.

4.3.6.3 Random Rotation.

Random rotation (Lovaas, 1981/2003) is typically employed subsequent to discrimination training, and provides the final stage of DTT. It can be used both in establishing maintenance of items previously learned during massed-trialling and discrimination training, and for testing their mastery. During random rotation, a number of previously taught items are presented in random order, ensuring that the learner does not learn artefactual patterns of responding. Thus, random rotation can be “considered a safety check and a strengthening measure that ensures the student has acquired correct discrimination through the employment of differential reinforcement procedures” (Lovaas, 2003, p. 131).

4.3.7 Natural Environment Training

Natural Environment Training (NET; Sundberg & Partington, 1998) provides an alternative, less structured, and more naturalistic, approach to teaching verbal behaviour than DTT.

Although NET derives from the Natural Language Paradigm (NLP; Koegel, O’Dell, &

Koegel, 1987), NLP utilises a psycho-linguistic conceptual framework whereas NET is based upon the analysis of verbal behaviour (Skinner, 1957). According to Sundberg and Partington (1998), Natural Environment Training (NET) should be used as a teaching technique within EIBI for autism, in addition to DTT. NET seeks to enable children with autism spontaneously to emit and to generalise verbal behaviour in the context of motivating activities (LeBlanc, Esch, Sidener, & Firth, 2006; Sundberg & Partington, 1998). During the initial stages of NET, the teacher focuses on mand training through manipulation of a learner’s MOs

(Michael, 2004; Sundberg & Partington, 1998). The main focus of NET in the early stages of a curriculum is to teach manding and to establish the teacher as a perceived source of

reinforcement, although, gradually, additional demands related to ongoing motivating activities will be introduced (e.g., a learner may be asked to tact or point to the parts of the

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toy he is playing with). Depending on the learner’s skills and learning objectives in place, NET is planned around activities and objects that motivate the learner’s behaviour (i.e., through manipulation of MOs).

NET differs from DTT in a number of fundamental ways (Koegel, Koegel, & Surratt, 1992; Sundberg & Partington, 1999). Firstly, during NET, the learning activity is chosen by the learner, whereas in DTT, stimuli are chosen, and learning processes directed, by the teacher. Secondly, NET initially centres on establishing manding, whereas DTT focuses mainly on teaching all other classes of verbal behaviour. Thirdly, during NET, natural

contingencies of reinforcement operate (e.g., opportunities to play with desired items provide both the learning activity itself and intrinsic sources of reinforcement for engaging in that activity) whereas, in DTT, extrinsic reinforcers that are not directly related to individual responses are provided by the teacher (e.g., social praise or tangible reinforcers may be presented within, for example, a block of visual match-to-sample trials). Lastly, less rigorous mastery criteria are employed in NET than in DTT. For example, during NET, any attempt to respond verbally may be reinforced, whereas, during DTT, only appropriate responses, or successive approximations to those responses, will be reinforced. Research has shown that although both NET and DTT are effective in establishing verbal repertoires in children with autism, NET alone may be effective in establishing spontaneous verbal behaviour and its generalisation (Delprato, 2001; Elliot, Hall, & Soper, 1991; Koegel, et al., 1992).