Tue 11 Apr 2006
Today Tony was out of sorts. His gross and fine motor skills were off and he was relatively irritable most of the day. Whitney and I thought it seemed like he was displaying symptoms of a gluten infraction, but to Marlaina’s knowledge there has been no such infraction. She suspects he is allergic to soy.
We started the day easy with a walk right after a very light breakfast (only 2 fries). I did some motor imitation and he did almost all of them on the first time. Parker joined us on our walk and we had some more fun exploring the great outdoors going under, over, around and through things.
Back inside we worked on a few animal tacts. We used the puppets, but Tony had no love for them today. He was more interested in jumping and play-dough. He’s improving on his mand for “play-dough” though. We’ve also been trying to incorporate Jill’s two-word-combo with Tony like “want cup” “give ball.”
Jill came and Tony had a fairly good session. When he came out, he was reluctant to go immediately back inside to work. Instead of letting him get out of all his work for the day, Parker and I brought the tunnel out to the room to get some more out of him. Although we were competing with Mr. Roger’s, Tony was still responsive when we asked him something.
After playing for awhile, Tony manded for “car” and Marlaina thought it would be good to take him to the park for some exercise. We stressed prepositions with him during this field trip, going “over bridge” “down slide” and “up stairs.” We also did some swinging and running! Yeh!
When we returned from our outdoor adventure, Tony seemed tired and irritable. We kept working with him on some more tacts and receptives but Tony had other plans (coloring). Tony requested “walk” a final time holding his cup and turtle. We took him out for only a few minutes until he laid down in a pile of leaves. Both Turtle and his cup were dirty as a result and this did not make Tony happy. He whined until we headed for home holding our hands. After that it was night, night. A long day for Tony considering his upset in diet (soy?)
April 12th, 2006 at 4:12 am
Hi everybody:
I found some time to catch up on the Tony blog fix last night and this morning and wanted to post a few impressions. You guys are doing a wonderful job teaching skills to Tony. It is very reinforcing to see how much he is learning for everyone involved. Two recent situations in particular that caught my attention. First,….Parker writes….”went and got the turtle and was waiting to meet Tony at the bottom of the steps with turtle behind my back. I said “somebody’s behind my back,” and jingled turtle in order to produce his unmistakeable sound. Then I said “I wonder . . .[hesitation] . . .Tony chimed in “who!” and I reinforced it by presenting him with turtle and saying “turtle!” Building anticipation (e.g., hyping) the reinforcer is good and makes things even more exciting. The second situation involved “playing dumb” before opening the door to get a two word mand out. This is a great teaching strategy to shape articulation and better mands. If he were to seem to exhibit any signs of frustration when using this, go ahead and prompt him out using echoics to avoid a major tantrum, but try this strategy again later (recommended for very powerful reinforcers like going outside for a walk).
Regarding receptives by function (e.g., “pick the one you write with”) you may want to present more than two choices to decrease the likliehood that he gets it by luck. Also, have him tact each object before presenting the receptive question. I know this is experimental stuff at this point, but having him tact these objects before asking a tougher question may increase the likliehood of success on the tougher question.
Whitney, good questions. If he pats his head during the context of the song “Head, shoulder” after he is asked to pat his head, this is a receptive skill. If he echoes the body parts after you stated them, it would be echoic. If he fills in part of the song, it would be intraverbal. If he points to his head, and says “head” without you saying it, it would be tact. So I guess it depends upon the context in which he exhibits the particular skill. I can’t remember which category we targeted for this song (intraverbal?).
Score each preposition on a different line of the data sheet because, for example, he may have “over” but not “under”,etc. I think I messed up when I wrote these down originally by putting them as over/under. Sorry.
I hope this is helpful. Call if questions. Are we meeting on Friday?
Jay