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This system is taught to the students in phases starting with a single photocard exchange all the way up to the exchange of a complete sentence. Each student on the Photocard Exchange System at JRC has an individually designed communication book containing specific photocards that represent items/activities that the student is likely to wish to request.
For more information about JRC’s curriculum to teach nonverbal students how to request things, see below. CURRICULUM FOR TEACHING MANDING AND PREREQUISITE SKILLS
Matthew Israel This curriculum has three sections:
The steps listed in this curriculum represent a first draft attempt to analyze what the major component skills are that may need to be taught and what is the order in which it would be best to teach these skills. Each of the below steps may, however, need to be further divided into substeps in order to most efficiently teach the skill in question. And steps will no doubt need to be added that are not presently included. It is also possible that we may find that one or more of the steps listed below can be omitted without major problems. I have tried to indicate cases where a step might be skipped if needed. For each step a target rate correct should be set that will constitute adequate mastery of the skill. I. Prerequisite Skills Some of these skills may not be able to be taught effectively unless we have authority to use some minor physical aversives, such as the cheek snap or the spank on the leg or unless we are able to control major problematic behaviors such as aggression. Consequently, a supervisor may decide to defer teaching some of these skills until such procedures are available or until major problematic behaviors are under control. Step 1. Following Directions. The teacher gives the student certain directions, prompts him/her to show the behavior in question (see below for specific prompting scheme), and then rewards the student for following them and, if needed, administers a punishment if the student refuses. The directions are as follows:
Stand up General procedure for teaching skills in this step and for teaching similar skills. The basic approach to behavioral teaching is to follow the ABC paradigm, which is: Antecedent(Stimulus)-àBehavioràConsequence The direction “Come here” is the Antecedent or stimulus. The student’s response of coming in response to that command is the Behavior and the Consequence is the teacher’s approval plus, perhaps, some other reward(s) such as a token, a bit of food, applause, praise, etc. In order for the ABC scheme to work, the student must first be motivated to obtain the Consequence. Therefore if you are using bits of food as the consequence (which is recommended) you must make sure that the student is hungry. For students who are going to work seriously on such skills as following directions, they should not be served their normal breakfast and should earn their breakfast in small bits of food in the course of this training exercise. If the student is adequately motivated (e.g., hungry) and if the reward is well chosen (e.g, bits of food that that the student likes), then providing the food reward after student executes the desired behavior will make the behavior of coming to you, when you give the direction “Come here, please,” more likely in the future. Another way of putting this result is that the reward procedure will increase the probability of the behavior occurring in the future—i.e., it will strengthen or accelerate the behavior. Still another way of characterizing the result of a trial in which the behavior of coming here is rewarded after the direction “Come here, please,” is given, is this: the procedure has the effect of imparting some stimulus control to the direction “Come here, please” when you give it in the future. Each trial on which the behavior is rewarded just after you give that direction imparts a little more stimulus control, or a little more strength to the behavior. Eventually we strengthen the behavior so much that it reaches a point (a kind of threshold point) at which the behavior is shown as soon as you say “Come here, please.” At first, however, the student may not show the behavior at all when the procedure is initially used. In other words at that point the behavior may have no strength or so very little strength that it cannot be displayed. So, to help evoke the behavior, we have give it some outside assistance. For example, in the teaching procedure described below, the outside help or prompt that we use is twofold: (1) a hand signal that the teacher gives when giving the command; and (2)a push on the back that an aide gives to the student from behind, forcing him to walk forward toward you after you have said, “Come here, please.” We call this bit of outside help a prompt. The prompt, combined with whatever low strength the “Come here” command may have, now evokes the behavior. We immediately reward it. As a result, the command acquires a little bit more stimulus control and the behavior a little bit more strength. Because of these changes, on the next trial the behavior may not need enough outside help (prompting) to be evoked. So we try to see if a slightly smaller prompt will now be sufficient to evoke the behavior. If it does, we reward the behavior. If it does not, we make the prompt a little stronger so that it will once again evoke the behavior and we reward it when it is evoked. Thus the process is to gradually diminish the amount of prompt as the behavior grows stronger. We call this “fading the prompt” over successive training trials. Eventually we hope to reach a point where no outside prompting is required at all. When using this strategy of prompting and then fading the prompt across a series of training trials it is important to try to select a prompt that can be faded in gradual stages. Physical prompts are often of this type. In summary, when teaching a skill such as responding appropriately to “Come here, please!” there will be the need to use partial prompts that can be, hopefully, faded from trial to trial as the behavior strengthens. For each behavior of this type that we want to teach, we need to define what constitutes a full prompt and what the graded series of diminishing prompts will consist of. For example, I suggest below some specific prompting steps that might be used as you teach a student to respond appropriately to the command, “Come here, please.” The table below not only shows the stages of the fading of the prompt but also provides a place where the teacher can record how much prompt was required on each trial. Here are the recommended teaching procedures for teaching the student to respond appropriately to “Come here, please!”
A major problem with this type of training scheme is that some students may become too prompt-dependent. For these students, the beginning of the prompt functions as a signal that allow the student to get started. As a result the student never gets started until a prompt is delivered. If this is still happening between step 9 and 10, you may have to try punishing the behavior as a refusal. After waiting the 5 seconds, say, “No refusing!” in a loud enough tone to be aversive. If necessary, shout it close enough to the ear to be a little frightening. Then try again. This may or may not help, but is probably worth trying. Charting. We need to develop a way to use precision teaching to record this type of “controlled operant” (as opposed to “free operant”) behavior. Possibilities:
We
will need to develop comparable prompting and recording schemes for each
of the other skills listed below. Step 2. Good sitting. The
student learns to sit still for 30-60 seconds, with good posture, feet
together, knees together, hands folded in lap and making eye contact with
the teacher’s eyes. The teacher is sitting directly in front of the
student. Step 3. Working consistently at a transfer task. The
student is given a box with a hole in the cover. His/her task is to
transfer items from a bin into the box. The items can be nerf balls if
there is danger of the student throwing the objects. We should consider
developing a device that would measure the rate of work automatically. Step 4. Working consistently at a task involving matching to sample (shape box). The student transfers shapes from a bin into a shape box. This task is composed of three component substeps, each of which differs with respect to the number of shapes that are used. If the student can do step c below without having to go through steps a and b, then a and c can be safely omitted. The component steps are as follows:
Shape box with 2 shapes Step 5. Sorting the shapes used with the shape box for 4 shapes. The student is given a quantity of shapes that are to be sorted into separate piles according to their shapes. If the student can sort all four types of shapes (substep c below), he/she can skip substep a and b. Otherwise, the student should go through all of the steps:
Step 6. Nonverbal imitation The
student learns to imitate actions by the teacher such as: raising one
hand; touching the nose; touching the head; clapping; raising two hands;
standing up; sitting down
II. Learning to Mand by Pointing with a
Pictorial Menu or by Exchanging a Card. In this section, the curriculum steps take the student through the following subgoals:
In this section the student learns to exchange photocards for desired items. This goal is very similar to the goal of the PECS system. The present curriculum differs from the PECS system in that I have tried, in designing it as well as in designing the other parts of this curriculum, to use certain principles of behavior analysis, programmed instruction, and precision teaching which are as follows:
The student will be given a group of 50 objects. The group will consist of 5 duplicates of 10 different “target items.” His/her job is to separate (sort) each type of object into its own pile. The objects to be used will be the same objects that he/she will be learning to request later in the series by pointing, exchanging cards, and by vocalizing. Five of these items should be items that the student is not likely to want (e.g., paper plate, paper napkin, toothpick, empty paper cup, plastic fork, plastic knife, plastic spoon) Five of them should be items that he/she is likely to want if hungry or thirsty (e.g. piece of banana, dried fruit, chocolate soy milk, etc.) This step is comprised of the following eight substeps. If the student can do the last of the substeps (substep h) correctly and at the mastery fluency, he/she can omit the first seven substeps (substeps a – g). If not, start the student at substep a and advance through all the substeps.
Step 2. Sorting photocards that represent the 10 target items. The
student will be given a thoroughly shuffled and mixed up deck of
photocards.. Each deck will be composed of 5 identical photos of each of
the 10 “target items.”. Five of these sets will be for desired items and
five of the sets will be for undesired items. All of the items chosen to
be included (i.e., represented by photos/drawings) should be items that
are small enough that it will be possible to place the item, together with
other 9 items on the desk in front of the student. Step 3. Matching-to-Sample photographs displayed on the computer The pictorial menu that is used at the end of each sequence in this software should be modified so that it has a special pictorial menu that contains photographs of the 10 target items. This menu should replace the menu that we previously have been using for the basic skills series. If the student needs prompting to point to one of the desired items in this menu, the teacher may give the student this prompt. The student should go through Chapters 1-10 in the Basic Skills Series. Immediately following Chapter 10, I would like to try inserting a new chapter in which the images to be matched are the photographs of the 10 target items listed above. I would like to see if the students can master this skill at that point; however, if they cannot do so, we may need to insert the present chapters that involve matching letters and numbers (which are currently numbered Chapters 11-25?) between Chapter 10 and the new to-be-developed chapter in which the items to be matched are the photographs of the 10 target items. The chapters to be done are the following: Chapter 1-3-student learns to touch a shape on a computer screen, moving through the sequence of the shape being stationary to the shape being in up to 9 locations. Chapter 4-10-student learns to match shapes on a computer screen. On the first chapter within this group, size color, shape, and “oddity” all function as prompts to help the student match shapes successfully. On each successive chapter, however, one of these prompts is withdrawn until the student is using shape alone to get the correct answer. Chapter 11-13-student match characters on a computer screen, to include uppercase and lowercase letters of the alphabet and numbers. Chapter 14-This is a new to-be-created chapter in which the student will be matching-to-sample the same 10 photographic images of the target items. Once the student has mastered this new Chapter 14, he/she may advance to Step 3.
Teaching procedures to use: Step 4: Tacting the 10 photographs from dictation on the computer (receptive vocabulary). The
names of the 10 target items are presented by the computer, and the
student is asked, on each trial, to select the photograph of that item
(e.g., “Point to the banana”). The choices will be drawn from the set of
photographs of the ten target items.
Step 5: Using the computer pictorial menu to
point to a photograph to ask for a reward. At this point the teacher should try to get the student to select a photo from the pictorial menu that is used with the Basic Skills program without a full physical prompt and eventually without any physical prompt at all. This training can take place as the student does Chapters 15-16 (previously numbered as Chapters 14-25). These are the chapters in which the student matches Boardmaker icons and other photographs on the computer.
Student should be given the same deck of photocards described in Step 2
above. The cards should be shuffled well so that they are not in any
particular order. In front of the student should be placed 10 (transparent
if possible) plastic containers each of which contains one of the 10
target items. Attached to the back of each container, and sticking up
above the top of the container should be a photocard that is a
representation of the item that is to be placed (sorted ) into that
container. The student’s job is to take the top photocard in the deck, and
place it in the container that contains the real item that is the subject
of the photograph on his/her card. The student is aided by the fact that
each container has, attached to its rear wall and sticking up above the
container, a photograph of the item that is in the container. By simply
matching the card in his/her hand with the same card that is sticking up
above the container that contains the photographed item, the student
should be able to place the card from the deck into the appropriate clear
container. Then the student does the same thing with the next photocard
in the deck, and so on. The containers should be large enough so that the
cards, when placed in them, do not obscure the real items that they
contain. Step 7: Matching the photocard to the real item without any match-to-sample prompting.
This step is identical to the preceding step (6) except that there is no
photo/drawing attached to the container to assist the student to get the
correct answer. Teaching procedures are the same as in Step 3. Step 8: Matching a real item to the associated photocard.
This is a reversal of the procedure in the preceding
Step 7. Now the 10 plastic containers will each contain a photo of one of
the10 different items. The photos will be attached to the back of the
containers as in step 4 above. The student is given a mixed group of the
target objects. There are more than one instance of each object in the
group. The student’s job is to take each of real objects and place it in
the correct container. Teaching procedures are the same as in Step 3. Step 9: Manding by matching a photocard to real item. (“What do you want?” part 1)
The teacher places 5 photocards in a line on the
desk in front of the student. Four of these will be photographs of items
that are nonedible and for which he/she has no apparent need. For example,
one could be a photograph of an empty cup, one of a napkin, one of a
plastic spoon, and one of a plastic knife. The fifth should be a photo of
a food item that the student is likely to want (e.g., a piece of banana).
For each trial, the photocards are arranged in a different order so that
they do not appear at the same positions each time. On each trial the
teacher/aide says, “What do you want?” The student picks up one of the
photocards and places it on top of the container that contains the item
he/she wants. The teacher gives the student whatever item he/she has
placed the photocard on top of. After the student is selecting the desired
item consistently, the teacher changes the item that is functioning as the
desired item. Teaching procedures can be the same as in Step 3 above. Step 10: Manding by handing the photocard to the teacher (“What do you want?” part 2)
This step is identical to Step 7 except that the
teacher now intercepts the photocard before it gets to be placed in the
bin that has the real item and gradually requires the student to simply
give the teacher the photocard instead of placing it in one of the bins.
Teaching procedures are the same as in Step 3 above. Step 11: Manding by handing the picture to the teacher with an enlarged set of choices with the target group of items (“What do you want?” part 3) After
the student is doing step 8 consistently, requesting the desired item by
giving the appropriate card to the teacher, gradually enlarge the choices
to 6 cards, in which there are now two desired items. Once the student is
consistently choosing either of the two desired items, gradually continue
the expansion of the number of choices until there are 10 choices in front
of the student, five of which are “desired” items, with the position of
the items continuing to be altered from trial to trial. Step 12: Manding by handing other photocards to the teacher (other than those that show the 10 target items). [Further curriculum steps need to be written for expanding the number of photocards the student is able to use for choosing what he/she wishes. These steps will use some of the same procedures described above. In the course of these steps the student will learn to (1) select and exchange the new photocards from a set that is placed in front of him/her on the desk, that is displayed on a bulletin board, or that is contained in a book of photocards; and (2) to point to these new photos when they appear on a pictorial menu on a computer screen or on a bulletin board, or on a cardboad pictorial printed menu.].
C. Learning to Mand by Naming the Desired Item Step 1. Echoing the names of the target items. The
ten names of items are used. The teacher says a name and the student is
required to repeat the word after hearing it from the teacher. If the
student answers incorrectly, the teacher uses the punishment procedure
suggested in sectionA4 above. If the student gives no answer, the teacher
uses a minimal echoic prompt. For example, the teacher uses the prompt
progression “B”à ”Ba”à”Ban”à
”Bana”à ”Banan”à
”Banana” .: Step 2. Tacting the target items The
ten real items that are used in Section A are also used in this step. The
ten items are placed in front of the student. The teacher points to, or
picks up, one of the ten items and says, “What is this?” The student
responds by naming the item correctly. If the student answers incorrectly,
the teacher uses the punishment procedure suggested above in step A4 and
then give as small an amount of echoic prompting as possible. For example,
use the prompt progression “B”à
”Ba”à”Ban”à
”Bana”à ”Banan”à
”Banana” . If the student gives no answer at all, the teacher uses as
small an amount of echoic prompt as possible. The goal is for the student
to tact each of the ten items with the need for any echoic prompting. If
the student answers correctly, without requiring an echoic prompt, the
teacher gives the student praise, a token, and the item that the student
just tacted. Step 3. Manding with the help of a tactual prompt and with minimal echoic prompting. The
teacher places one of the desired items in front of the student. The
teacher says “What do you want?” If the student gives no response, the
teacher points to the banana to prompt a response. If still there is no
response, the teacher gives a minimal echoic prompt for “banana.” If the
student answers correctly, he gets a bite of the item he just named. If
the student answers incorrectly, he is handed whatever item that he has
just named Step 4. Manding without the help of a tactual response as a prompt and with no echoic prompting. No items are present. The student is asked, “What do you want?” If the student answers with the name of one of the desired (or undesired) items, the teacher gives him/her the item he just manded. If he/she gives no answer, the teacher, after waiting for a period of time, prompts with the name of one of the desired items, using as minimal an amount of echoic prompting as possible. Then the teacher again says, “What do you want?” If the student gives the name of any item (desired or undesired) the teacher gives the student the item in question. If the student give no answer, the teacher, after waiting for a period of time, prompts with the name of one of the other desired items, using as minimal an amount of echoic prompting as possible. If the student keeps asking for the same thing, prompt the student to ask for something different by briefly flashing a look at a different desired item. The teacher repeats the procedure. If the student gives no answer, the teacher uses a minimal echoic prompt for one of the other desired items (not the two that he/she has used in the first two trials). Eventually the teacher has used all five of the desired items as the word that the teacher prompts echoically. In the course of doing this, if the teach withholds his/her echoic prompt for a long enough time, some students may vocalize one of the names of the items without echoic prompting. If he/she does so, the teacher of course gives the student the item he/she has just named. It is also possible that other types of prompting could be used instead of echoic prompting. For example, the teacher might quickly flash the picture of a possibly desired item or the item itself. In any case, this step not considered mastered until the student (1) is able to mand without any prompting whatsoever; and (2) is able to mand any items that he/she wants, and not just the “target items that were used during the teaching process.” |
The Judge Rotenberg Center is dedicated to teaching and training students
an effective means of functional communication. Approximately
The
student’s daily work on computers in the classroom is used to help teach
the use of the Photocard Exchange System. When the student completes an
academic task on the computer, a reward menu screen appears. Using this
menu, the student chooses an item; the student is also taught to make the
corresponding exchange using his photocards book. In addition to the
classroom training, breakfast is sometimes used to teach the student how
to use his/her photocards to request things. The students sit at a table
with a photocards easel that contains photocards representing all the food
items that they may request for breakfast. The student is taught to
request each item using the appropriate photocard. Each initiation of
communication throughout the day and in every setting is utilized to
successfully teach the student how to independently and effectively
communicate using the photocards. 