Evaluation of a self-instructional package for teaching tutors to conduct discrete-trials teaching with children with autism
| dc.contributor.author | Thomson, Kendra M. | |
| dc.contributor.examiningcommittee | Yu, C.T. (Psychology) Cornick, Angela (Psychology) Hrycaiko, Dennis (Kinesiology and Recreation Management) Matson, Johnny (Louisiana State University) | en |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Martin, Garry (Psychology) | en |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2011-04-04T13:26:44Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2011-04-04T13:26:44Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2011-04-04T13:26:44Z | |
| dc.degree.discipline | Psychology | en_US |
| dc.degree.level | Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | A widely used instructional method for teaching children with autism is Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA), and a main component of ABA programming is discrete-trials teaching (DTT). DTT is made up of a series of brief teaching trials, with each trial including an antecedent (e.g., an instruction from the teacher), a response from the child, and an immediate consequence (e.g., a reinforcer provided for a correct response). Using a modified multiple-baseline design across participants, Experiment 1 assessed the effectiveness of a DTT self-instructional package (Fazzio & Martin, 2007) for teaching 4 pairs of newly-hired ABA tutors how to apply 21 components of DTT to teach 3 tasks to a confederate role-playing a child with autism. In Experiment 2, a group of 8 additional tutors were each independently presented with the same procedure. In both experiments, in Phase 1(baseline), tutors attempted to teach the 3 tasks to the confederate. In Phase 2 (manual), tutors mastered a 37-page self-instructional manual and once again attempted to teach the same 3 tasks to the confederate. Phase 3 was a within-subject AB design component. That is, if tutors did not meet a DTT mastery criterion of 80% after studying the manual in Phase 2, then they watched a brief video demonstration of a DTT expert teaching a task to a child role-playing a child with autism (Fazzio, 2007), and then once again attempted to teach the 3 tasks to the confederate. Across both experiments: a) The 16 tutors averaged 4.6 hours to master the self-instructional manual, and showed an average improvement in DTT accuracy of 32.2% from baseline; b) For the 13 tutors who did not meet the mastery criterion after reading the manual, their average DTT performance improved an additional 12% after watching the video; c) 13 of the 16 participants met mastery (3 after the manual and 10 after the manual plus video), and the other 3 tutors were very close to mastery. The results suggest that the training package is a practical, economical and efficient method of instructing newly-hired tutors in ABA programs for children with autism. | en |
| dc.description.note | May 2011 | en |
| dc.format.extent | 2813923 bytes | |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1993/4434 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | en_US |
| dc.rights | open access | en_US |
| dc.subject | autism | en |
| dc.subject | discrete-trials teaching | en |
| dc.subject | applied behavior analysis | en |
| dc.title | Evaluation of a self-instructional package for teaching tutors to conduct discrete-trials teaching with children with autism | en |
| dc.type | doctoral thesis | en_US |