A Skill Acquisition Plan for Children with Autism

Need help with assignments?

Our qualified writers can create original, plagiarism-free papers in any format you choose (APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, etc.)

Order from us for quality, customized work in due time of your choice.

Click Here To Order Now

The skill acquisition plan is targeted at teaching a child to ask when he or she wants something. It is a crucial independence skill for kids to learn based on the ability to articulate their needs and desires in a clear, respectful, and appropriate manner.

  • Prepare for the learning environment by minimizing all the distractions
  • Establishing motivation/ Motivating operation through Stimulus

Motivation emerges when a subject becomes valuable for a child and changes throughout the day. The motivating process is an antecedent that changes the potency of a consequence (Tarbox and Tarbox, 2016, p. 65). Establishing an operation increases the potency of a result and evokes the behavior. For instance, if a child has not eaten for few hours, he/she is more likely to ask for food, which becomes a reinforcer in this case. Abolishing operations decrease the potency of the consequence and temporarily suppresses behavior. For example, if a child had a large glass of juice, the juice does not serve as a reinforcer anymore. After a long time, juice or any other drink can serve as a reinforcer within the establishing operation.

Figure 1

Every time a child wants to eat or drink, he or she will ask a parent to give them food or drink. The hunger or thrust serve as a stimulus for a child to start asking for something he/she wants or needs.

  1. A child has not drunk for hours ’ a child is thirsty ’ a child asks for some drink
  2. A child is engaged in the development game and is struggling with finishing it ’ a teacher asks whether a child needs some help ’ a child asks for help and a teacher helps to finish the game.
  • Stimulus Control

According to Tarbox and Tarbox (2016), the behavior occurs reliably in the presence of a particular stimulus, when the behavior is enhanced in the presence of an antecedent stimulus and is not enhanced in its absence. For instance, if a father usually gives his child a chocolate bar when his son asks for it, thus reinforcing the behavior of asking, a child will reliably ask for chocolate when the father comes home.

Figure 2

A child is more likely to ask for something in the presence of his father, therefore, developing discrimination stimulus.

  1. A child is struggling with putting on clothes and starts crying ’ a teacher says No cry and asks whether a child is struggling and needs some help and orders a child to ask ’ a child asks for help with putting on clothes (a teacher helps only when a child asks for help).
  2. A child needs help ’ a child asks for help ’ a teacher/parent says thank you for asking for help

A child has developed the stimulus for asking for help because his teacher/parent thanked him/her for doing so.

  • Discriminative stimulus and generalization

It is a stimulus that has control over behavior because it was reliably reinforced in the presence of a particular stimulus in the past (father serves as a discriminative stimulus). Generalization refers to the spreading of the intervention effects to outside of the intervention process.

Reference

Tarbox, J., & Tarbox, C. (2016). Training manual for behavior technicians working with individuals with autism. Academic Press.

Need help with assignments?

Our qualified writers can create original, plagiarism-free papers in any format you choose (APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, etc.)

Order from us for quality, customized work in due time of your choice.

Click Here To Order Now