USE OF A VISUAL STIMULUS FADING PROCEDURE TO TEACH

COLOR NAMING TO AN AUTISTIC CHILD

JAMES K. LUISELLI

Boston University

and

SALLY DONELLON

University of Hawaii

Summary-An eight-year-old autistic boy was taught color naming skills using a visual stimulus fading procedure. During a pretest assessment, he was unable to name any of five colored blocks correctly. Training consisted of teaching the child to sight read the name of each color which was superimposed over a card of the respective color. In a series of graduated steps, the color word was then faded out until independent naming was achieved. Discrimination training was accomplished by systematically introducing each color until all five colors could be named on random presentation. During post-test assessments conducted one day, ten days, and seven months after the termination of training, correct responding was maintained and generalization of color naming was observed.

Behavior modification procedures have been used effectively to teach expressive language skills to autistic children (Lovaas, 1977; Lovaas and Newsom, 1976). Typically, these procedures include verbal prompting of desired responses. For example, a teacher may show a child a picture (e.g., ball), ask, “What is this?“, and then state “Ball”. The child would be reinforced for imitating the verbal model, “Ball”. As training continues the prompt is gradually faded out (e.g., “ba. . . . , b. . . .“) until the child is able to respond independently. However, in some cases (cf. Lovaas, 1977) independent responding is never achieved, i.e., the child only responds when some portion of the verbal prompt is given. Unless stimulus control is shifted from the prompt to the actual training stimulus or teacher question, the child will fail to acquire functional language.

The present case study describes a situation in which an autistic child was unable to learn an expressive language skill, color naming,

via standard verbal prompting procedures. The problem appeared to be due to the child’s failure to attend consistently to the training materials. In an attempt to increase the saliency of the materials and to train color naming, the study examined the effects of a visual stimulus fading procedure.

METHOD Subject

Ron was an eight-year-old boy diagnosed as autistic by an agency not associated with this project. He could identify most common objects and used short phrases to communicate his needs. However, he was unable to use expressive abstract terms such as pronouns, prepositions, and the target response of this study, colors. Previous efforts to teach color naming were performed by teachers in a special education classroom and by parents in a home- based training program. Also, three to four months preceding the study attempts to teach color naming through daily intensive training sessions were unsuccessful. This training consisted of presenting a colored object, asking, “What is this?“, prompting the correct answer (e.g., “Red”), and reinforcing Ron’s imitation of the prompt (cf. Luiselli et II/., 1980). Gradually the verbal prompt was to be faded out. However, independent naming was

This work was conducted while the authors were affiliated with the Behavioral lntervention Project, Arlington, Massachusetts, and was supported by a grant from Title Vi B, Education of the Handicapped Act, Project Number 77-010-71 B/N.

Reprint requests should be sent to James K. Luiselli, Behavioral Intervention Project, Thompson School, 60 N. Union Street, Arlington, MA 02174.

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74 JAMES K. LUISELLI and SALLY DONELLON

never achieved. This appeared to be a result of Ron’s failure t0 make consistent eye-contact with the training stimuli when verbal prompts were presented.

Serfing

The study was performed in a special education class- room. Ron attended class five days per week with nine other children with learning and behavior problems. Training sessions were conducted twice daily for IS min in a small corner of the classroom. All sessions were individualized.

Target responses and measurement The target responses included the expressive naming

of five colors: red, blue, black, orange, and yellow. Formal assessment of Ron’s ability to name the five

colors was conducted during one pre-training and three post-training sessions (one day, ten days, and approxi- mately seven months following training). In each session, a teacher aligned five one-inch wooden blocks in a hori- zontal row, on a table in front of Ron. Each block corre- sponded to one of the five colors. Blocks were separated from each other by approximately one inch. The teacher stated, “What color is this?“, and then pointed to one of the blocks. Blocks were presented in a random order during two “runs” of five blocks. After hearing the question and making eye-contact with the block, Ron was allowed 5 set to respond. Responses were scored as correct (correct naming of color) or incorrect (incorrect naming of color or failure to respond). All pre-training and post- training assessments were administered in the absence of contingent reinforcement. Ron was praised verbally at the conclusion of the session for “working nicely”.

A second form of post-training sessions was conducted to assess Ron’s ability to name a variety of colored objects. Ten objects (two of each color) were presented to him in two random “runs” of five trials. Examples of objects included a toy truck, pen, feather, crayon, and similar items found in the classroom. Assessment procedures were the same as described with the colored blocks.

Reliability was measured during all pre-training and post-training sessions by having a second teacher indepen- dently record responses. Trials on which both teachers agreed that a correct response occurred were divided by the total triaIs presented and multiplied by 100. Reliability was 100% on all occasions.

Training Training consisted of a combination of visual and verbal

prompts. Ron was very much interested in letter configur- ations. For example, he enjoyed having a teacher print letters on paper whereafter he would be asked to name the letters. He was also able to sight-read several words, e.g., “moon, coke, eye”. The goal of training was to use the words of each color as stimuli which might increase attention toward training materials. Individual cards measur- ing I.5 x 4.5 inches were cut out of construction paper. The cards corresponded to the training colors. Super- imposed over each card was its respective color word. The letters of each word measured approximately I inch in height and I% inch in width, and were drawn with a black felt tip pen. Over a series of six cards, an individual color word was faded until no word was present.

The training program consisted of nine steps. At Step 1, a card was presented with full letters, Ron was asked, “What color is it”, and the teacher verbally modelled the correct response to be imitated, for example, “Blue”. At Step 2, the same card was presented but only one-half of the model was provided (e.g., “BI. . .“). At Step 3, Ron again viewed the same card, but the verbal model was reduced to only the initial sound of the word (e.g., “B. . . .I’). Finally, at Step 4, the card was presented and no verbal model was provided. When Ron was consistently naming the correct color at Step 4, visual fading of the color word began. From Steps 5 through to 9 the word was faded out.

Throughout training, Ron was reinforced for verbalizing the correct color at each training step. Reinforcement was in the form of teacher praise (e.g., “Good boy”) following every correct response (FRl), and a token pre- sented after every third correct response (FR3). The tokens were stored in a plastic container and were exchanged at scheduled activities during the day (e.g., snack, going to gym).

Steps were advanced each time ten consecutive correct responses were given to a step. A color response was considered acquired when Ron exhibited ten consecutive correct responses to Step 9. Incorrect responses were ignored. However, following three consecutive incorrect responses to a step, Ron moved back one step until ten consecutive correct responses were displayed. Training was then advanced in the manner described.

Training was initiated on one color card. Following acquisition of this color, a second color was introduced. Trials for each color were presented in an alternating random order with advancement and retraining criteria in effect for each color card. When Ron exhibited correct responses during ten consecutive random presentations of both colors, at Step 9. a third card was introduced. Training continued in this manner until all five colors were acquired. The program was terminated when Ron could name each color, at Step 9, during ten consecutive random presentations of all five colors.

RESULTS

Figure 1 presents the results of pre-training and post-training sessions. During pre-training Ron failed to name any colored block correctly. His response on each trial was to echo the last word of the teacher’s question, “What color is this?“. During the three post-training assess- ments correct responding was lOO%, 90% and 100% respectively. The cumulative number of training trials required for acquisition of the five colors was 3176. During the three post- training sessions in which a variety of colored objects were presented, Ron responded correctly 100% of the time on all occassions.

USE OF A VISUAL STIMULUS 7s

100

P 60 Ti

ii 60 L I

Post 3

Figure I. Percentage of correct color naming responses during pre-training and post-training assessment sessions (Post 1: one day following training; Post 2: ten days following training; Post 3: seven months following training): Solid bars represent responding to colored blocks; dashed bars represent responding to a variety of colored objects in the classroom.

DISCUSSION

This paper describes the use of a visual stimulus fading procedure to teach color naming to an autistic child. Because of limitations in experimental design it is not possible to state unequivocally that the coIor naming skill was a product of the training procedure. However, two factors strongly suggest that it was respon- sible for the observed changes. First, before the study Ron had participated in numerous train- ing programs to teach color naming. These programs used a variety of training methods other than visual fading and all were unsuccess- ful. Second, Ron’s behavior during training with visual fading was noticeably different than during other programs. In previous attempts to teach colors, Ron’s attention to stimulus materials was inconsistent and teachers fre- quently complained that it was difficult to estab- lish attention to materials while simultaneously prompting Ron. During the visual fading pro- gram Ron looked at the training materials without breaking eye-contact. It appeared that because letters were such salient stimuli to Ron, they could be used to focus his attention to training materials, thereby insuring that he was visually attending to the colors when verbal prompts were delivered.

A large quantity of training trials was required to establish solid discrimination of colors. This quantity was a function of retraining which was administered contingent on errors. Two consistent patterns of errors were observed. For each color, Ron frequently committed errors when advancing from Step 8 to Step 9. This was the point where each color word was finally faded and independent naming required. Second, whenever a new color was introduced into training, Ron would begin to name previously acquired colors incorrectly. Both patterns of error-responding necessitated frequent retrain- ing in order to achieve and maintain indepen- dent naming. Although it is not uncommon for several thousand trials to be required in training communication skills with autistic children (cf. Carr et al., 1978; Lovaas, 1977) two strategies might have been adopted to reduce errors in the present program. The commission of errors observed when Ron ad- vanced from the next-to-last to the last fading step suggests that finer fading of the color names may have led to a more “errorless” performance. Another strategy for reducing errors would be to change the retraining criteria from three consecutive errors to one error. The goal of this strategy would be immediateiy to bring Ron back to a level of correct responding contingent on an error. These considerations notwithstanding, the present results document a novel application of stimulus fading with an autistic child and highlight the need for identify- ing salient prompt-stimuli which can be used to initiate functional responding (Rincover and Koegel, 1977).

REFERENCES

Carr E. G., Binkoff J. A., Kologinsky E. and Eddy M. (1978) Acquisition of sign language by autistic children. I. Expressive labeiling, J. Appl. Behov. Anal. 11,489~501.

Lovaas 0. I. (1977) The Autistic Child: Language Develop- ment through Behavior Modification, Irvington, New York.

Lovaas 0. 1. and Newsom C. D. (1976) Behavior modi- fication with psychotic children. In Handbook ojBehavior Modification and Behavior Therapy (Ed. by Leitenberg H.), Prentice Hall, New Jersey.

76 JAMES K. LUISELLI and SALLY DONELLON

Luiselli J. K., Donellon S.. Colozzi G. A., Helfen C. S. and Rincover A. and Koegel R. L. (1977) Research on the Pemberton B. W. (1980) Teaching expressive language education of autistic children: Recent advances and abstractions to retarded children: Training and generaliz- future directions. In Advances in Clinical Child Psy- ation effects of modelling. fading, and reinforcement clrology (Ed. by Lahey B. B. and Kazdin 4. E.), Plenum procedures. Behav. Engng. (in press). Press, New York.