Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Setting
Empty classroom within the school environment
Materials
The Clicker+™, digital timer, antecedent cards, card easel,
adhesive stickers, data sheets, 3 colored shirts, and various
preferred items and activities
Dependent Variables
Independent object-naming signs emitted by participant
Total number of prompts presented within session
Method
Experimental Design: Multielement Design
TAG: The principal investigator tagged all occurrences of correct
signing behavior and presented a backup reinforcer, which includes
descriptive praise statements in addition to preferred items or activities.
Contingent Reinforcement (CR): Descriptive praise statements paired
with preferred items or activities (i.e., back-up reinforcers) were
presented contingent upon the occurrence of correct signing behavior.
Noncontingent Reinforcement (NCR): The principal investigator
provided access to preferred items and general praise statements on a
fixed-time schedule of 30 seconds.
Procedure
10 signing trials were conducted during each session.
Simultaneously visual cues (i.e., picture cards) and vocal commands
(e.g., “Sign Fish”) were presented to the participant as antecedents for
the target behavior (i.e., sign the corresponding word).
If the participant failed to emit the target behavior independently, the
prompt assistant provided minimal prompting (i.e., least-to-most).
Results
Interobserver Agreement
Collected throughout at least 30% of all sessions
Participant NCR CR TAG
A 100% 97.5% 97.5%
B 100% 100% 98%
C 97.5% 97.5% 100%%
Treatment Integrity
Treatment integrity was assessed during at least 30% of the sessions and
totaled 100% across all experimental conditions to ensure that the
independent variable (i.e., CR, TAG and NCR) was introduced correctly.
Social Validity
Parents of all participants reported that TAG was an appropriate
intervention to use with their children.
Teachers of all participants reported that their student’s became more
social with staff and peers through the use of appropriate signs, gestures
and vocalizations.
Results
Independent Object-Naming Signing Responses
Total number of independent responses emitted by participants
per treatment condition
Treatment Condition
Participant
NCR CR TAG
A 0 3 14
B 26 58 55
C 1 12 40
Total 27 73 109
Results
Results
Results
Results
Prompts
Total number of prompts presented to participants during each
treatment condition
Treatment Condition
Participant
NCR CR TAG
Key: HOH-Dark Blue, PM-Red, FM-Green, D2D- Purple, PM-Light Blue, G-Orange
Results
Total number of prompts presented to participant C during each prompt
hierarchy level
Key: HOH-Dark Blue, PM-Red, FM-Green, D2D- Purple, PM-Light Blue, G-Orange