INDUCING VARIABILITY IN COMMUNICATIVE GESTURES USED BY SEVERELY RETARDED INDIVIDUALS
Handicapped individuals who have been taught spontaneous gesture requests often use only a small part of their vocabulary. Procedures to recover the unused part of this vocabulary have not been documented. This study was designed to identify procedures for increasing the proportion of gestures used...
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Published in | Journal of applied behavior analysis Vol. 24; no. 2; pp. 379 - 386 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Oxford, UK
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1991
Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Handicapped individuals who have been taught spontaneous gesture requests often use only a small part of their vocabulary. Procedures to recover the unused part of this vocabulary have not been documented. This study was designed to identify procedures for increasing the proportion of gestures used spontaneously. Six mentally handicapped individuals served as subjects. After a baseline phase during which spontaneous gesture requests were reinforced, consequences were withheld for high‐rate gesture requests. This led to an increase in different gesture requests. Although gesture requests did not return to baseline levels during a reversal condition, functional control was demonstrated by way of a multiple baseline across subjects. The absence of a reversal effect suggests enduring effects of the procedure. |
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Bibliography: | ArticleID:JABA934 istex:247D8D05143EFE6E422EED9378141B2A12E12E87 ark:/67375/WNG-7BQD8FHX-S ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 0021-8855 1938-3703 |
DOI: | 10.1901/jaba.1991.24-379 |