Graduation Year

2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.S.

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.)

Degree Granting Department

Child and Family Studies

Major Professor

Catia Cividini-Motta, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Meka McCammon, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Bryon Miller, Ph.D.

Keywords

Additional Stimuli, bilingual, Indirect, verbal behavior

Abstract

There are millions of people who speak multiple languages (U.S. Census Bureau, 2019), yet there is a common misconception that teaching a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) more than one language will cause delays in language acquisition (Trelles & Castro, 2019). This misconception has led to fear amongst bilingual caregivers, resulting in many choosing to not speak to their child in their heritage language, which in turn can cause communication barriers between them and their child. It is imperative that a child from a bilingual home can communicate (e.g., respond to instructions) in both languages. However, because many children with ASD acquire skills at a slower rate than neurotypical children (National Institute of Health, 2020), selection of instructional procedures for children with ASD must consider their efficiency. Instructive feedback has been demonstrated to be effective and efficient in teaching multiple targets to children with ASD without requiring additional teaching (Werts et al., 1995). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of instructive feedback, implemented in a second language, on the acquisition of listener responses of children with ASD from bilingual homes. Results indicate that direct training let to the acquisition of primary targets (i.e., Spanish listener responses) for the three of the participants. Additionally, the inclusion of instructive feedback resulted in the acquisition of English listener responses for all three participants and the emergence of some tacts for all participants.

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