Using ELL to teach receptive labeling

[Guest guest]

Jennie,

At this stage, without expressive (correct?) it's sort of tough to expand

further than you have. Ideally, you'd move into intraverbals at this point.

Your " nameless " program is really a category, that has been constructed

through RFFC. It sounds like you're doing great!

Mark

[Guest guest]

Dora,

To begin let me say that our daughter has a great deal of difficulty

with receptives (when we began she only responded receptively to her name)

and at first I tried presenting several targets at a time and it did not

work for her . . . so we tried the following as recommended by our

consultant. This may be waaaaay to easy for some, but for our daughter it's

worked just well.

Actually, when it comes to receptive labeling (identifying objects)

errorless learning is EXACTLY a good starting point. We took my things my

daughter likes and used ELL to teach her to identify them..

I began by presenting one object " Pooh " - you give the Sd " Touch Pooh "

and prompt her to touch it (I have her tap it - not grab it since the

command is " touch " ). At first I put it right before her face (holding it in

my hand) and would make sure she would tap and not grab (use a full physical

prompt). Once she gets the " just touch " part then you want to move the

object around so that she has to scan for it. I placed it above my head,

off to her side, you get the idea. Scanning is really important. You also

want to place it in a neutral place (a table, on the floor, etc.) so she

doesn't get the idea that it's something you need to be holding. Again, you

may start with a full physical prompt and work your way down to a partial

prompt or even just a glance. Once she touches the object right after you

present the Sd 3 days in a row then you begin presenting it against

something totally unfamiliar to her (we used things like a can of tuna, a

stapler, etc.) - a non/familiar distractor. You present the Sd. " Touch

Pooh " and prompt her to touch it. If you are holding one in each hand -

then the Pooh you would put right in front of her face and the n/f dist.

within her sight but out of her reach. THE IDEA HERE IS THAT SHE DOESN'T

TOUCH THE DISTRACTOR - hence the idea of errorless. Be sure to switch the

two around and you are looking for her to scan . . . Also, you want to

present in a neutral place, again not always holding it. In the case of a

table you'd put the Pooh close to her and the distractor far from her.

Prompt if you need for her to touch it and once she's touching consistently

then you slowly begin to move the distractor closer to the target. The key

here is not to let her be wrong. If you are holding the Pooh and as you

begin to move the two objects closer she tries to touch the wrong one - you

quickly intercept her hand with the target. So that even though she was

aiming for the wrong one she touches the right one (this is something you

get better at with time). You may need to backtrack a bit and go back to

placing your distractor a bit farther away. I usually begin with my hands

and then present at a table (harder to intercept those " wrong " answers).

Once you have moved to where she is correctly identifying the Pooh when

presented against a n/f distractor (and by the way, the n/f distractor

doesn't have to remain the same (e.g. always the can of tuna) but has to

remain VERY unfamiliar). Then you present against two unfamiliar

distractors (here you can't hold in your hand so it gets a little trickier -

but you can use the positional prompt I've mentioned). Our consultant says

you quickly want to move from an array of two to an array of three. Also,

this sounds like it would take forever, but you want to reduce/remove your

prompting as quickly as you can. Also, if I found that in the morning we

had moved towards an independent, correct response consistently and in the

afternoon, especially after a good 2-3 hour nap, I would treat the afternoon

response as a " first trial " data. So it didn't need to of take 3

consecutive days to get a correct independent response to move onto the next

step in the sequence.

The sequence I follow is the following:

Target alone

Target v. 1 n/f distractor

Target v. 1 familiar (f) distractor

(this is something she is familiar with but not something you will

target soon - ex. we have tons of those figurines from Mc's - all

those tie-ins to movies. She recognizes them but doesn't carry them around

(a sign that it is a preferred), I use these, or a part of a toy (peg from

pegboard) as " familiar distractors).

T v. 2 n/f distractors

T v. 1f & 1 n/f distractors

T v. 2 f distractors

Once you have two targets that have gone through the entire sequence

then you add:

T v. 1MT & 1 n/f (MT=mastered target)

T v. 1MT & 1 f

T v. 2MT

Now, eventually, once we were down pretty far down this sequence, we

would introduce another target and begin the process with that one (e.g. one

day we may be on ( " Blue " v. 1 MT and 1 f) and ( " ball " v. 1f & 1 n/f) and

( " Mickey " alone) - three targets at various steps in the process). But you

may find that you need to introuduce one target and complete the sequence at

a time before introducing another.

I can't stress enough how important not letting your child be wrong is.

Also, you need to change your n/f distractors around too (after a while

these become " familiar " and lose their purpose). Also, try to remove the

prompts as quickly as your child can handle it. And again, our consultant

stressed that once we needed to look for our daughter to be scanning (this

data gets marked as a + with a circle around it) because it shows that she

really knows what she is looking for. Now, eventually she knows these so

well that she answers immediately, almost with no thought process involved -

but that comes with time.

I tried to explain this so that it makes sense, as someone else

mentioned before, I got it down to a science, but it's hard to put into

words. In the process, I tend to go on and on . . . sorry!

It sounds as though you are just beginning to find out about S/P . . .

keep in mind that we do not do receptive label trials one after the another.

What I've described happens as we are presenting many other types of Sds.,

gross motor imitation, echoics, gross motor with an objects, etc.

Hope this works well for you!

All the best!

Isabel

ipawling@...

From: DC <lists@...>

Subject: Re: [ ] tacting and prompting

> Hello

> This is all very interesting. Some questions though... where can I learn

> more about errorless learning? And what do you use before using errorless

> learning? My daughter can't identify most objects (at least not by words)

> ... not a bowl, a tree, a person, etc.... She only names a few select

> objects (never when asking for the object though), so I'm not sure if

> errorless learning would be a good starting point. ??? Heck, she won't

> even say her name, or the name of anyone in our family. (Frustrating.)

>

[Guest guest]

Mark,

We tend to move things into a field very quickly as well and our carrier

phrases are going well. Even before I read the S/P book, when we brought

Ize back home and after the surgeries for LKS stuff, etc., I was determined

to change somethings just because it made sense, and I realized that most

psychologists and SLP's, do not go around saying TOUCH such and such all

day, or even the slightly more natural, Point To, across the board. So, we

started, Show me, Where is, Point to, Give me, Find the drills and because

we went slowly first saying, Point to noun, point to noun, where is noun,

which was a noun he knew inside and out, he would get it correct, and then,

show me noun, show me noun, point to noun, and so forth.

I like the idea of mixing the cards in, and I was not sure I should do it,

but I guess it sounds okay from reading the book and this list. We have

started putting a shape in with a piece of furniture and a flower so that

he doesn't keep SHAPES as a totally seperate file in his head which he is

prone to do if you don't let him know that things can be correct regardless

or be applied to many things, as in it would be an OVAL shape. (our new

shape this week.) Or it could later, a oval platter or an oval clock. We

haven't done this yet in drill, but we have started pointing this out in

books a bit, you know, like, " Isaac, the Cat in the Hat is carrying (verb

action working on receptively) the box. " and then, " Look, it is heavy

(attribute, concept we are working on.) and then, " That box is a big

square, " which is a shape and attribute we worked on and mastered in drill

format seperately.

My question here is now we have furniture as a catergory. And receptively

he identifies bed, bureau, lamp, table and chair, and he hs started to

identify nicely, " What do you sit on? " and " What do you sleep on? "

correctly, and so, now how do we expand on that?

What else would we do with the CHAIR picture or BED picture. Do you do

associations now or what with the pictures of these known items. We have

not done associations yet, per se. We have started to do a drill that we

have no name for, LOL, called, " What goes in the bathroom?, " and have a

field of three, and there might be a picture of a swing, playdough and a

toilet. Naturally, we hope he gets the toilet. And then we do something

else and return to the drill and lay out a picture of a ball, a tiger and a

sink, and ask the same question and Isaac points to sink. And then we do

some fine motor, go back to the bathroom series again and ask, " Which one

goes in the bathroom? " and we have a picture of a spoon, a vacuum cleaner

and a towel. He is starting to do this nicely, and it is only one week old,

so we haven't yet done more than the bathroom and the bedroom. I am trying

to work more on reasoning and understanding now, more than labels, but feel

at a loss on how to go about it and expand it. If anyone has any ideas for

making this more expandable please share.

With the toilet, can I start asking, but prompting since I doubt he would

understand it, " Which one is WHITE? " and " What flushes? "

Doing our drills lately more in this format, he goes faster, and we get

done, but then I am not sure what to add or how to proceed and we still

have till January before osmebody comes in and helps.

He is slightly bored with some of the older materials, but I am not sure

how to expand it further. He still has a hard time with objects and having

them have multiple words attached and not wanting to use them as they are

intended. He is good about not trying to eat with the spoon now, but this

took work. So, with this mastered spoon and knowing many spoons is it time

to ask questions about, " Which one stirs food? " and that type of thing. I

don't want to go to fast or too slow and nobody is much help right now,

since my therapists learn from me. LOL And what they don't learn from me if

they work for somebody else is not this method.

Jennie

[Guest guest]

At 12:04 PM 12/18/99 EST, Markc612@... wrote:

>From: Markc612@...

>

>Jennie,

>At this stage, without expressive (correct?) it's sort of tough to expand

>further than you have. Ideally, you'd move into intraverbals at this

point.

>Your " nameless " program is really a category, that has been constructed

>through RFFC. It sounds like you're doing great!

>

>Mark

>

Thanks Mark!

We did catergories in the DTT/ABA way and have probably around ten, more if

you count non-id matching programs, you know flowers, shoes, bikes, cars,

planes, etc., where all are different, but same catergory.

It is really hard to move when verbal is such an issue. His aphasia is a

block since he has an actual noun retrieval problem, and most of his

limited language are NOT nouns oddly enough.

In his case, when he was under six, he had a VAST volcabulary, lots of it

echoeing and with the LKS stuff, lost it till he was mute and could barely

growl. He is slowly getting better expressively and his neurology team said

to really concentrate on two areas specifically, although of course not

just those two things. They wanted me to work on concepts and ideas which I

am trying to do with the bathroom ideas, etc., and to work on expressive

communication and receptive, but receptive is going better than we had EVER

expected, although still a real hurting area when there are lots of

distractions, and last time I talked to the neurologist, he said, " Jennie,

you have to find a way for Isaac to USE words verbally now as best you can,

and do it however you can, but work on it, because he now has a nice inner

language developing and is very interested in communicating and has some

words. " So, I am hoping the consultant can help and we are on Vince

Carbone's waiting list.

I think I will work on approximations with mands and tacts as best we can

for now, and wait the few weeks till we have a workshop and try to then

focus on the mands/tacts stuff 50% or more of the time, because this other

stuff is pretty solid.

Jennie