Receptive Identification of Behaviours

Receptive Identification of Behaviours

In the Receptive Identification of Behaviours Program, the student is taught to identify common everyday actions, such as eating, standing, walking, and smiling. The same prerequisites are recommended for this program as were recommended for the Receptive Identification of Objects Program. These prerequisite skills include matching and the early parts of the programs on nonverbal imitation and receptive language, all of which will help the student attend to (discriminate) the stimuli involved in this program. It is likely that the student will experience more difficulty discriminating between behaviours than objects, perhaps because many behaviours are more similar to one another than objects are and because identification of behaviours may involve more distracting stimuli (e.g., movement) than those used in teaching objects. Take some comfort, however, in the fact that the teaching procedures employed in the present program are nearly identical to those presented in the preceding program dealing with receptive identification of objects.

To facilitate mastery in the current program, begin teaching by introducing two-dimensional (2-D) stimuli (i.e., pictures of behaviours). Pictures are useful teaching tools because distracting stimuli may be reduced and pictures can illustrate behaviours that may be difficult to perform during teaching sessions (e.g., sleeping, riding a bicycle).

The following materials should be gathered before beginning to teach the Receptive Identification of Behaviours Program: separate photos of the student, a parent, or a friend engaging in easily identifiable and commonly occurring behaviours, such as eating, bicycling, sleeping, and smiling; or pictures showing individuals performing the same commonly occurring behaviours cut out from magazines or books and mounted onto 3 X 5-inch index cards; or pictures from a pre-packaged set of commercially available behaviour cards that clearly illustrate the actions you want to teach the student to identify. (Most stores selling teaching materials carry such cards.)

Identifying the First Behaviours

The first behaviour you select to teach the student to identify should be one that the student finds enjoyable or one that is frequently performed in his everyday environment, such as eating. It may be helpful to initially use photos of the student or other familiar person performing behaviours because such pictures may be more salient to the student than pictures of unfamiliar persons. In the early stages of this program, present behaviours that are easily discriminable visually as well as auditory. For example, walking versus running might be a difficult discrimination early on in this program, as might sleeping versus sweeping. In illustrating the teaching steps of the present program, we use the behaviours eating and standing. Examples of other behaviours you may want to teach the student are as follows:

To help ensure that the student can tell the pictures apart, the student should have mastered matching of the stimuli to be taught in this program.

► Step 1

SD1 consists of the presentation of a picture depicting a person eating while you concurrently say 'Eating.' Given the student's familiarity with the Receptive Identification of Objects Program (Chapter 17), he may understand that he is supposed to respond by touching the card. If the student performs this response correctly, continue to present mass trials of SD l until the student responds correctly in 5 out of 5 unprompted trials. Then go on to Step 2. If the student responds incorrectly or does not respond at all, prompt him by either modelling the correct response or physically guiding the student's hand on top of the card. Continue to present SD l in mass trials, gradually fading the prompt over subsequent trials. Always remove the stimulus card between trials. When presenting SD l, move the card to a different location on the table for each trial. The student should be able to touch the card when instructed to do so regardless of where it is placed on the table. After the student responds correctly in 5 out of 5 or 9 out of 10 unprompted trials, go on to Step 2.

► Step 2

The behaviour depicted on the second card should be different in appearance and sound from the first behaviour in order to facilitate the student's discrimination between the two behaviours. If eating is the first behaviour taught, drinking is not an ideal second behaviour because of the similarities between these two actions. Also remember that the initial behaviours selected should have maximally dissimilar labels. Standing may be a good choice for the second behaviour.

Begin Step 2 by placing the second behaviour card (a card depicting a person standing) in the centre of the cleared table in front of the student and concurrently saying, 'Standing.' SD2 consists of the presentation of the second behaviour card and your enunciation of 'Standing.' If the student responds correctly by touching the behaviour card, present mass trials until the student responds correctly in 5 out of 5 unprompted trials. If the student responds incorrectly or does not respond at all, prompt as you did in Step 1 and fade the prompt over subsequent trials. When presenting SD2, place the card in different locations on the table in each trial. The student should be able to touch the card when instructed to do so regardless of where it is positioned on the table. When the student responds correctly in 5 consecutive unprompted trials, go on to the next step.

► Step 3

Place the cards used in SD l (eating) and SD2 (standing) on the table. To minimize errors in teaching the student to discriminate between SD l and SD2, use a position prompt by placing the SD2 card on the far comer of the table, away from the SD l card, which is placed close to and in front of the student. Next, present SD l by saying, 'Eating.' Over successive trials, slowly minimize the position prompt by moving the SD2 card closer to the SD l card. That is, repeatedly present the instruction 'Eating' and reinforce the student's correct response as you fade the standing card into place beside the eating card. If the student fails to respond correctly, reintroduce the position prompt at a sufficient strength to reinstate correct responding to SD l, and then again proceed to fade the prompt until the cards are side by side and equidistant from the student. Throughout this presentation, the leftright positions of the SD l and SD2 cards should be randomly rotated to eliminate potential position cues. When the student responds correctly to SD l in 4 consecutive unprompted trials with the positions of the two cards randomly rotated, go on to the next step

► Step 4

Present mass trials of SD2 (standing). Begin by using a full position prompt as done in the previous step, and fade this prompt over the next few trials. When the student responds correctly in 4 consecutive trials without prompting, go on to Step 5.

► Step 5

Present mass trials of SD l (eating), starting with a partial position prompt: Place the eating card in front of the student and the standing card 1 to 2 feet away from the eating card. Fade the position prompt over trials, randomly alternating the leftright positions of the cards. After 3 consecutive correct responses without prompting, go on to Step 6. Reduce the number of required correct responses with each successive switch from SD l to SD2. This is done in gradual steps on the assumption that the SD1-R1 and SD2-R2 associations become increasingly stronger with each reinforcement for correct responding.

► Step 6

Switch back to mass trials of SD2 (standing), starting with a partial position prompt. Quickly fade this prompt over the next few trials. Go on to the next step after 3 consecutive unprompted correct responses.

► Step 7

Switch to mass trials of SD1 (eating), beginning with a minimal position prompt. Quickly fade this prompt over the next few trials. When the student responds correctly in 2 unprompted consecutive trials, go on to Step 8.

► Step 8

Continue to alternate between SD1 and SD2, gradually fading the position prompt within blocks of trials until the student responds correctly to SD1 and SD2 when presented alternately with the behaviour cards placed equidistant from the student and their left-right positions interchanged in a random manner. If the student responds incorrectly on a trial, use the minimum position prompt necessary to reinstate correct responding. Fade the prompt as soon as possible. The student has mastered the discrimination between eating and standing when he responds correctly in 9 out of 10 or 19 out of 20 unprompted and randomly rotated trials. As with the first discrimination in the Receptive Identification of Objects Program, we recommend firming up this important achievement and generalizing it across teachers and environments before moving on to SD3.

As new behaviour cards are introduced and mastered in mass trials, intermix trials of the new SD with trials of SD learned earlier. For example, once SD3 is mastered when presented alone, intermix SD3 with SD1, then intermix SD3 with SD2, and then intermix all three SD. This procedure becomes difficult and impractical to implement after the student acquires the identification of several behaviours. Once this point is reached, the new SD need only be intermixed with three or four already mastered SD. As always, place the student's achievements on a maintenance schedule, and intermix the Receptive Identification of Behaviours Program with other programs. This helps reduce boredom and is essential to maintaining mastery.

Areas of Difficulty

Some students have difficulty identifying the correct behaviour as position prompts are faded. If the student gives an incorrect response as the cards are positioned closer together, go back and reinstate the previous level of prompt that helped the student respond correctly. When the student responds correctly for at least 3 consecutive unprompted trials, try again to gradually fade the position prompt until the two cards are presented such that they are equidistant from the student. If the student continues to have difficulty identifying the correct card, present the cards vertically (e.g., against a board) rather than flat on the table. As with the Receptive Identification of Objects Program, the vertical presentation may make the cards more visible and thus facilitate the discrimination. Vertical presentation of cards, however, should be considered a prompt and faded as such.

It is possible for some students to acquire the discrimination between 2-D stimulus presentations without first learning to match the cards to identical cards. If this step has been deleted and if the student fails to acquire a particular discrimination in the present program check to see if the student can match pairs of cards. Note that some students are able to discriminate large features of behaviours (e.g., eating vs. standing) but more subtle differences (like smiling vs. frowning) prove to be too difficult. If this is true for the student you work with, go back and subject the difficult stimuli to matching (see Chapter 12). If the student can match the behaviour cards but fails to learn to identify the behaviours, some other factor may be contributing to the student's difficulty with this task. Consider placing the cards depicting the difficult discriminations on hold and introducing new behaviour cards to see if the student's performance improves. The difficult behaviours can be reintroduced at a later stage.

Learning the discrimination between two behaviours, especially early on in the program, may be too difficult for the student. The student may be helped by the pre-training exercise of discriminating SD1 from a contrasting stimulus. Replace SD2 with a contrasting stimulus (e.g., a blank card) and use the procedures described previously to teach the discrimination. In brief, start by placing the SD1 card in front of the student and the contrasting stimulus on the far comer of the table. Present SD1 until the student responds correctly in 9 out of 10 or 19 out of 20 unprompted trials, and then go on to intermixing SD1 with SD2.

Some students have extreme difficulty discriminating behaviours when they are presented in 2-D form. However, these students may master receptive identification of behaviours in vivo with relative ease (see the later section 'Identifying Behaviours In Vivo'). As with all programs, begin teaching in the area where the student's strength lies. The learning of receptive identification of behaviours in vivo may facilitate the acquisition of receptive identification of behaviours presented in 2-D form.

Generalizing Receptive Identification of Behaviours

It is critical that the student applies what he learns about a specific behaviour to varied representations of the same behaviour. Sometimes it is helpful to probe new pictures of mastered behaviours to see if the student generalizes on himself. If the student does not independently generalize, teach new exemplars following the procedures outlined earlier in this chapter, and periodically probe additional pictures to test for generalization. For example, show the student a novel picture of a person eating. If the student correctly responds to this behaviour card, move on to another exemplar of the same action. If the student responds incorrectly, teach him to respond correctly to the novel exemplar by following the steps described in the earlier section 'Identifying the First Behaviours.' The larger the number of exemplars of behaviours the student masters, the more likely it is that the student will conceptualize the behaviour.

Identifying Behaviours in Vivo

Some students master receptive identification of behaviours in vivo (behaviours demonstrated by real-life persons) with more ease than receptive identification of behaviours presented in pictures. As mentioned earlier, the teaching of three-dimensional (3-D) stimuli should precede the teaching of 2-D stimuli if the student's strength lies in learning behaviours in vivo.

If the student began this program by identifying behaviours presented in 2-D form, teach in vivo identification of behaviours after the student learns to identify approximately 20 behaviours in their 2-D form. When teaching in vivo behaviour identification, use real-life models by asking two adults on the team to engage in the behaviours the student previously learned to identify in pictures. If the in vivo format is the student's first exposure to the Receptive Identification of Behaviours Program, follow the guidelines presented earlier in the section 'Identifying the First Behaviours,' which outlines how to go about choosing stimuli.

► Step 1

Position two adults (Adult 1 and Adult 2) 3 to 4 feet apart and about 4 to 6 feet in front of the student. Present mass trials of SD1, in which Adult 1 demonstrates a behaviour (e.g., clapping for 5 to 8 seconds) and the teacher concurrently says, 'Clapping' (if the behaviour chosen is clapping). Prompt and reinforce Rl, which consists of the student pointing to the adult who claps. Bring to mastery (5 out of 5 or 9 out of 10 unprompted correct responses).

► Step 2

Present SD2, which consists of Adult 2 jumping up and down five to eight times and the teacher concurrently saying, 'Jumping.' Bring to mastery as done in Step 1. Because the student may learn merely to point to the adult rather than to the adult's behaviours, it is necessary to introduce Step 3.

► Step 3

Intermix SD1 and SD2 according to discrimination learning procedures until the student responds correctly in 9 out of 10 or 19 out of 20 unprompted trials. To help rule out inadvertent prompts, the two adults should randomly alternate positions and behaviours. For example, Adult 1 should demonstrate clapping twice in a row, jumping once, clapping once, jumping three times, and so forth, and randomly alternate his or her left-right position. Bring to mastery (5 out of 5 or 9 out of 10 trials correct). Adult 2 should then be introduced and perform the behaviour Adult 1 is not performing at the same time. Such a task requires the student to make increasingly fine discriminations between behaviours and begin to generalize identification of behaviours across persons. Once the first two behaviours are mastered, new behaviours can be introduced by following the same procedures outlined in this section.

At some point the student should be taught to respond to slightly more elaborate requests, such as 'Point to clapping' and 'Point to jumping.' To reduce errors when additional words are introduced into the instruction, prompt the correct response by maximizing the volume and enunciation of the significant parts of the sentence while expressing the less important words softly and quickly (e.g., 'Point to CLAPPING'). Fade the prompt by gradually increasing the volume and lessening the pace of the least important words while decreasing the volume and increasing the pace of the most important component of the instruction until the entire SD is spoken at an equal volume and consistent rate.

Areas of Difficulty

Some students encounter serious difficulty mastering 3-D (in vivo) stimuli but proceed rather quickly at mastering 2-D stimuli. You may facilitate discrimination of 3-D stimuli by providing 2-D stimuli as prompts (e.g., by the adult positioning the corresponding 2-D behaviour card in front of himself or herself and then gradually fading the use of the card as a prompt). Some students give evidence of transfer between formats, with the learning of 2-D stimuli facilitating the acquisition of 3-D stimuli, or vice versa.

Concluding Comments

Movement is a primary means of exploration for most individuals. It is also often a source of enjoyment. Thus, teaching the student to identify her own movements and the movements of others may be an ideal means to advancing her receptive language. Some of the programs presented later in this manual use procedure similar to those outlined in this chapter to teach the student to verbally describe her own behaviours and the behaviours of others (see Chapter 24).