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INDUCING VARIABILITY IN COMMUNICATIVE GESTURES USED BY SEVERELY RETARDED INDIVIDUALS
Author(s) -
Duker Pieter C.,
Lent Chretienne
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
journal of applied behavior analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.1
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1938-3703
pISSN - 0021-8855
DOI - 10.1901/jaba.1991.24-379
Subject(s) - gesture , vocabulary , psychology , baseline (sea) , multiple baseline design , control (management) , manual communication , cognitive psychology , communication , developmental psychology , linguistics , computer science , artificial intelligence , intervention (counseling) , sign language , psychiatry , philosophy , oceanography , geology
Handicapped individuals who have been taught spontaneous gesture requests often use only a small part of their vocabulary. Procedures to recover the unused part of this vocabulary have not been documented. This study was designed to identify procedures for increasing the proportion of gestures used spontaneously. Six mentally handicapped individuals served as subjects. After a baseline phase during which spontaneous gesture requests were reinforced, consequences were withheld for high‐rate gesture requests. This led to an increase in different gesture requests. Although gesture requests did not return to baseline levels during a reversal condition, functional control was demonstrated by way of a multiple baseline across subjects. The absence of a reversal effect suggests enduring effects of the procedure.