BEHAVIOR T H E R A P Y ( 1973 ) 4, 700-702

Classroom Modification of Elective Mutism 1

JOANNE CALHOUN AND KARL P. KOENIG 2

University of New Mexico

Eight school children were selected whose rates of verbal behavior were so low as to warrant the designation of elective mutism. Four children were untreated and four experienced modification procedures suited to the indi- vidual child's problem and level of social development. Substantial verbal behavior change occurred in the treated group and these changes were naaintained one year later.

Elective mutism has been defined (Reed, 1963) as a low rate of verbal output in a relatively normal child. Failure to speak in e lementary school is a fairly common referral problem according to counselors in the Albuquerque Title I schools. These schools draw from lower socio- economic level families in which Spanish or an Indian language is often preferred but which is typically discouraged in the classroom. Bilingual, yet electively mute, such children fall progressively farther behind in school and become both socially and academically impaired unless inter- vention occurs.

The present study applied operant procedures which were easily under- stood and easily employed by the children's teachers. Since verbal ex- change between teacher and pupil was of paramount importance, re- wards were made contingent upon this class of behavior. Pretraining and subsequent planning with individual teachers resulted in mutual ly agree- able reinforcement procedures and in most cases the entire class received the reward. In this fashion it was anticipated that further isolation of the mute children might be avoided. Furthermore, peer approval might well be generated for verbalizations which would otherwise be ignored.

The children, whose ages ranged from five to eight years, were enrolled in grades kindergarten to third. Each was referred to the study because of grossly deficient or absent verbal behavior directed to adults in the classroom. Assignment to the experimental and control conditions was

The authors thank Mrs. Evelyn Curb of the Title I program and the counselors and teachers who cooperated enthusiastically with us.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Karl P. Koenig at the Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87106.

700 Copyright © 1973 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

BRIEF NOTES 701

random with the exception that no control subject be from the same school as an experimental subject.

The data were collected by a trained observer in 30 rain segments. A second observer was periodically used to estimate interjudge agreement (range = 80V~1005). All talk directed to adults (the teacher or the teacher's aide) was recorded verbatim and the total number of words per segment constituted the unit of measurement.

After subjects were selected each was observed for four segments on different days. When the modification procedures had been in force for 5 wk, verbal behavior records were taken again. One year after original baseline observations were made, follow-up data were collected for the eight subjects, all of whom had new teachers and, in several cases, had also changed schools. In no case was the new teacher aware that one of her pupils had previously been treated for mutism.

When post-experimental gain scores were tested for significance, the experimental subjects showed greater improvement (t = 3.26, p < .01, one-tailed test). At follow-up, the same comparison was only marginally significant (t = 1.44, p < .10) due to increased within group variability.

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[q(:. 1. t :hanges in verbal behavior as a function of treatments and time.

702 BRIEF NOTES

The results (see Fig. 1) suggest that major changes in the verbal be- havior of electively mute children can be accomplished by classroom teachers without great effort and that the changes are likely to be maintained over a period of 1 yr and be transferred to new classroom- teacher conibinafions.

REFERENCE

REEO, G. R. Elective mutism in children: A reappraisal. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 1963, 4, 99-107.