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March, 2007
Parent Teaching Tip
by Heather
How to
teach Receptive Labeling to your child:
Teaching the cue (e.g., “touch”, “point to”, and
“give me”) before the label can be helpful. Having
the child “touch” or “point to” preferred items can
teach these cues. Say “point to”, and prompt them to
point to their toy, etc. Reinforce with varied
praise (e.g. “Awesome pointing!”). Giving up
favorite things is also an extremely useful skill.
Say “Give me” and take their favorite thing. Say
“thank you”, or more descriptive praise, and
immediately give the preferred item back. Gradually
add a delay between when you take the preferred
item/praise the child and when you give the item
back.
Pick out pictures and objects that are identical or
similar to items that are important in the child’s
environment. You may want to take pictures of their
favorite things with a plain background (the same
background in every picture) to make the learning
relevant to your child. Teach labels (tacts) that
you have previously taught as requests (mands). If
language is followed consistently with access to
highly preferred reinforcers, learners may be more
motivated to use language in their natural
environment. “Pure tacts” are not really functional
anyway, as people do not generally walk around
randomly labeling objects. A tact is most often a
request for joint attention (“Mom, look! It’s an
airplane!”). One of our ultimate goals of teaching
should be to improve the quality of our children’s
lives by providing means to access their reinforcers.
If your child is unlikely to ever be highly
motivated by joint attention, you may want to skip
this target in favor of teaching a more functional
skill. If the skill is functional, it is more likely
to be utilized. Teaching a child to “touch” an item
may not be functional in their natural environment.
Teach them to “give” you their cup for a refill, or
“show” you what hurts.
Place two picture cards (one preferred item and one
non-preferred, but familiar item) on the table in
front of the child and sit next to his dominant
side, if applicable. Not only will this make it
easier for you to assist him with picking up or
pointing to the card, you want to make sure your
auditory cue (“Give me ball”) is what your child is
attending to. You want to avoid giving unintentional
visual cues, such as quickly glancing at the correct
choice.
On the first trial, give the cue (“Give me ball”)
and immediately prompt the child to comply.
Reinforce immediately. With each new trial,
rearrange the picture cards randomly to keep your
child from becoming dependent on the position of the
cards (i.e., make sure the correct choice is not
always presented on the left side, or closer to the
child than the distracter). As the session
continues, randomly change the position of the cards
on the table, not just in relation to each other.
Scanning is a skill that needs to be taught, just
like anything else. For example, it is much harder
to find something in a dirty room than a clean room.
If you are looking for a shirt and only your shirt
and a jacket on the floor, it will probably be
relatively easy to spot; but if you’re looking for
your shirt when the entire contents of your closet
is on the floor, it might be a bit harder to spot.
When you teach the first card, you might present it
in a straight line of 2. Gradually add more
distracter cards to the table and place the cards
more randomly, instead of in straight lines.
As quickly as possible, you want to start training
multiple examples for each picture or object. If the
learner can only identify a picture of a green cup
on a white background, you have not succeeded
teaching in “cup”. When you have taught the cue with
a number of different objects and pictures, teach a
new cue (e.g., “Point to…”) and then alternate
between the two.
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