Giving Partial Verbal Prompts for "Wh" Questions

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Brief Description

Maggie is a six-year-old girl with autism. When attending, she can follow many basic requests. Her expressive language consists of a variety of one- to three-word phrases. She rarely exhibits tantrums, but is often inattentive. She will work with a teacher for 20-30 minutes without breaks, and transitions well between activities.

Maggie has learned to answer some "wh" questions ("who," "what," etc.), but cannot answer questions she has not practiced. That is, her behavior has not "generalized" to "wh" questions she has not learned. When she does answer, she doesn't speak loudly enough or show appropriate eye contact.

In this vignette, Maggie's father reinforces appropriate answers to "wh" questions about social rules Maggie has learned. This helps Maggie learn general responses, as well as reinforcing her knowledge of social rules established previously. When Maggie has difficulty, her father provides prompts which will be faded as Maggie become more proficient.

Detailed Description

Guide to ABA Terms and Concepts

Behavior Issues

Maggie, a six-year-old girl with autism, is able to answer some "wh" questions ("who," "what," etc.) related to her daily activities. She cannot, however, reliably answer various general "wh" questions. That is, she is still only responding to the specific forms of questions she has learned, rather than to the general form of the question. Maggie also has difficulty answering questions using more than one word such as "yes" or "no." Maggie also does not make good eye contact or speak loudly enough for others to hear. In this video clip, Maggie's dad is asking her questions that she is in the process of learning the answers to. He is therefore providing her with partial verbal prompts as needed.

Goal

Maggie will correctly respond to "wh" questions about various everyday rules.

Teaching Sequence

Maggie will learn to discriminate between similar questions related to everyday rules and will be able to verbally state rules as relevant to such questions.

Consequences

Maggie's dad uses verbal praise to reinforce appropriate vocalizations of rules. Verbal praise is often specific to the activity, incorporating Maggie's correct response as part of the verbal praise ("I work and then I get to play, that's right").

What to Look For

Maggie is sitting at the kitchen table with her dad for this activity. Maggie is not very interested in this activity, and therefore requires more structure and fewer distractions. Due to her lack of interest, it may also have been beneficial to use of more powerful reinforcers (food). When children are less motivated to complete an activity, strong reinforcers may be needed to help motivate the child. As the client learns the activity, trainers will need to pay specific attention to ways in which the child can gain natural reinforcement. In doing this, the trainer will be able to fade contrived reinforcement (such as food) to more natural reinforcement (social interactions leading to additional social activities).

As these questions are still fairly new to Maggie, she is having difficulty providing the correct responses. Thus, her father is providing partial verbal prompts as necessary. Notice how in some clips he provides the first word of the answer phrase ("rule") and in others, he provides the first word followed by the first syllable of the second word. It is important to always strive to fade prompts such as this as soon as possible. This helps prevent the child from becoming dependent on such guidance or decreasing their individual effort towards the activity. 

As Maggie becomes more successful with these questions, her parents and teachers should make efforts to ask her questions in more natural settings, such as when such rules are being enforced. At some points throughout this clip, Maggie is speaking in a very low volume. This is an issue being addressed throughout other training sessions. Being that Maggie is still in the early stages of this particular skill set, her volume is not of interest and is not specifically addressed by her dad throughout these learning trials. However, once Maggie can reliably answer these questions, her responses should be shaped to be of appropriate tone and volume. 

What Comes Next?

In this segment, Maggie is learning, but requires a more structured setting to be successful. By creating a structured setting, she will be less distracted. Lessons such as this could be expanded and adapted to include many kinds of skills. Maggie will expand her understanding of rules in addition to expanding her repertoire of questions that she can answer. Once Maggie is able to provide the rules for various situations, they can be applied as necessary to help Maggie behave appropriately across settings and gain an understanding of what is expected of her in various situations.