Increasing the vocalizations of individuals with autism during intervention with a speech-generating device. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • This study aimed to teach individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and limited vocal speech to emit target vocalizations while using a speech-generating device (SGD). Of the 4 participants, 3 began emitting vocal word approximations with SGD responses after vocal instructional methods (delays, differential reinforcement, prompting) were introduced. Two participants met mastery criterion with a reinforcer delay and differential reinforcement, and 1 met criterion after fading an echoic model and prompt delay. For these participants, vocalizations initiated before speech outputs were shown to increase, and vocalizations generalized to a context in which the SGD was absent. The 4th participant showed high vocalization rates only when prompted. The results suggest that adding vocal instruction to an SGD-based intervention can increase vocalizations emitted along with SGD responses for some individuals with ASD.

published proceedings

  • J Appl Behav Anal

altmetric score

  • 1.25

author list (cited authors)

  • Gevarter, C., O'Reilly, M. F., Kuhn, M., Mills, K., Ferguson, R., Watkins, L., ... Lancioni, G. E.

citation count

  • 26

complete list of authors

  • Gevarter, Cindy||O'Reilly, Mark F||Kuhn, Michelle||Mills, Kasey||Ferguson, Raechal||Watkins, Laci||Sigafoos, Jeff||Lang, Russell||Rojeski, Laura||Lancioni, Giulio E

publication date

  • March 2016

publisher