Behavioral Interventions Behav. Intervent. 17: 3141 (2002) DOI: 10.1002/bin.

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THE EFFECT OF PROVIDING CHOICES ON SKILL ACQUISITION AND COMPETING BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISM DURING DISCRETE TRIAL INSTRUCTION
Bobby Newman1*, Meredith Needelman1, Dana R. Reinecke2 and Adrienne Robek2
2

Association in Manhattan for Autistic Children, New York, USA Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York, USA

Discrete trial instruction was carried out for three students with autism. An alternating treatments design was implemented. In one condition, teachers chose the reinforcers to be used and the order in which programs were conducted. In a second condition, students chose the order of programs and the reinforcers to be used. Speed of skill acquisition and the presence of competing behavior such as tantrums, aggression, escape attempts or idiosyncratic noncompliance responses were measured. Speed of skill acquisition did not differ between the two conditions, but competing behavior was markedly reduced during student choice conditions. Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In recent years, discrete trial teaching methodologies for teaching students with autistic-spectrum disorders have received increased attention (Bloomer, 2000). While it is generally acknowledged that these can be powerful techniques for teaching new skills, there is often resistance on the part of the student to the teaching process, particularly in the early stages of teaching when acquisition of skills is most difcult (see, e.g., Koegel & Koegel, 1995). Such resistance may take the form of tantrums, escape attempts, or other instances of behavior that interferes with the learning process (competing behavior). In an attempt to reduce the child's resistance to the teaching situation, some clinicians have introduced student choice-making into the procedure. For example, students might be allowed to choose teaching stimuli (see, e.g., Dunlap, 1984; Moes, 1998). Allowing the student to choose teaching stimuli has resulted in improvements in targeted language responses (Camarata & Nelson, 1992; Yoder, Kaiser, Alpert, & Fischer, 1993) as well as task engagement (see, e.g., Dunlap et al., 1994). It is a generally reported nding that introducing student choice-making into the teaching situation not only increases skill acquisition, but also has the important
*Correspondence to: Bobby Newman, AMAC, 25 West 17th Street, New York, NY 10011, USA.
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effect of reducing levels of competing behavior (Koegel, Koegel, Harrower, & Carter, 1999; Sigafoos, 1998). This has the net effect of making sessions more pleasant for both student and teacher. This no doubt makes the sessions more palatable not only to clinicians, but also to consumers observing the sessions and to the students themselves. In the current study, the role of providing opportunities to choose both reinforcers and program order was investigated. An alternating treatments design was employed to ascertain whether students would acquire skills faster when allowed to choose the order of programs and reinforcers to be earned, versus when teachers performed these necessary pre-teaching tasks. Additionally, we measured levels of competing behavior during each condition.

METHOD Students
Three male students, all diagnosed with autism, participated in the study. Students ranged in age from seven through 12 years. All students scored in the moderately retarded range of intellectual functioning, as measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Two of the students, 11 and 12 years old, were able to speak in several word sentences, primarily to make requests or brief observations. A third student, seven years old, was nonverbal and communicated through the use of an augmentative communication system (PECS: the Picture Exchange Communication System). All students were enrolled in a school for children with autistic-spectrum disorders. All were being taught through a combination of discrete trial and incidental teaching. The class staff to student ratio was 6: (1 3) (six students, with one teacher and three teacher assistants) for the younger student. The two older students were enrolled in classes where the class staff to student ratio was 8: (1 2) (eight students, with one teacher and two teacher assistants). Students were chosen for this study based upon staff reports that discrete trial teaching was difcult due to the presence of competing behavior. Competing behavior included escape attempts, gaze avoidance, perseverative laughing, and aggression such as scratching and kicking.

Design and Procedure

Prior to the study, a random order of presentation of two conditions (teacher versus student selection of reinforcers and program order) was created. An alternating treatments design was implemented, based upon this random order of days. Each
Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Behav. Intervent. 17: 3141 (2002)

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experimental day was either a `teacher-selects' or a `student-selects' day. We did not shift between conditions within a particular day. The alternating-treatments design was selected to control for practice effects while allowing us to continue to work within the same programs with each child for the duration of the study. Due to the speed with which students may master skills in well designed teaching situations, it would have been more difcult to perform direct comparisons within programs with other types of single-subject design. Three programs were isolated for analysis for each student. Andy was taught color identication, receptive object identication, and shape identication. Carl and Paul were taught expressive letter identication, expressive number identication, and social questions. These particular programs were taught only by the experimenters. The other classroom staff did not carry out these programs at any point during the study.

Teaching Setting
Each daily session began with the teacher and student moving to a teaching table within the classroom. Each classroom was equipped with several such tables. Two to four other students worked at other tables within the room. The student's program book and all teaching materials were brought to the teaching table. The student and teacher sat facing each other, with teaching materials placed on the table between them.

Pre-teaching Instructions
At the outset of each teacher-selects day, the following statement was made to the student: `Today I'm going to choose what programs we work on rst and what you can earn. First, we're going to work on (name of program) and you can earn (specify reinforcer).' At the outset of each student-selects day, the following statement was made to the student: `Today you can choose what programs we work on rst and what you want to earn. Today, we're going to work on (names of programs). What program would you like to do rst?'

Teaching Protocol
Following the pre-teaching instructions, the actual discrete trial teaching took place. During both teacher-selects and student-selects conditions, an errorless learning approach was used. Students received continuous reinforcement for accurate responses following the rst instruction. If students did not comply with the initial
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instruction for each trial within three seconds, a physical prompt was provided to guide the student through the behavior. For programs requiring verbal responses, the correct response was modeled if the student did not answer correctly. Ten trials of each program were conducted (30 trials total for the three programs) each day. Intertrial intervals ranged from 3 to 5 seconds. Teaching materials were consistent across all program days and conditions, and were individualized for each student's programs. Across both conditions, all three programs were worked on each day. It was only the order that was altered based upon student or teacher choice. The study was terminated for each student when the student reached mastery criterion for all three programs being taught. Mastery criterion was set at 90% accuracy or above for three consecutive sessions. As programs were run until all programs had reached mastery, in some cases individual programs were conducted beyond this mastery criterion. There were no noted decreases in performance with the extra days, however.

Student-Selects Days
Students were allowed to select the rst program, either verbally or through the use of PECS, following the pre-teaching instructions. Following the selection of the rst program, students were asked, `What would you like to work for?' and were shown a variety of primary and activity (toy) commodities. These items were chosen based upon the student's reinforcer inventory, a listing created by staff of what had been determined to be reinforcing for this student. Following reinforcer selection, teaching commenced. Following the completion of each program, the student was asked to choose from the remaining two programs and to choose a new reinforcer from those available. The student could select either a new reinforcer or the one he had received previously.

Teacher-Selects Days
On teacher-selects days, teaching progressed as typically occurred during the school day. The teacher chose the reinforcers the student earned, and chose the order of programs to be conducted. Reinforcers were selected from the reinforcer inventory sheet. These sheets were derived from observations by staff of what the student found particularly reinforcing. Staff kept the same reinforcer within a program, but might choose a new one before beginning the second or third program if the reinforcer seemed to be losing its effectiveness. It should be noted that during teacher-selects days, the teacher conducted whatever program and used whatever reinforcer had been selected rst by the student during
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the last student-selects day. In this way, we hoped to control for preference versus being able to make a choice. If it were just a matter of preference, there should be no difference between the two conditions. If the opportunity to make a choice was the operative variable, however, students should perform better when allowed to make a choice than when the same program and reinforcer were presented as teacher choice. Data for the discrete trial teaching programs were collected by the experimenter running the programs, using a standard percent correct measure. Competing behavior was collected using a frequency count system. Inter-observer agreement was collected on approximately 33% of the program days. Agreement was assessed using a point by point method and was only counted as agreement if observers matched exactly. Inter-observer agreement ranged from 90 to 100% for discrete-trial data, with a mean of 97%. For the presence of competing behavior, inter-observer agreement ranged from 73 to 92%, with a mean of 84%.

RESULTS
Figures 13 show percent correct responding on all teaching programs for each child. As can be seen, there were no differences in speed of skill acquisition across the two conditions. Students acquired skills equally quickly under teacher-selected and student-selected program orders and reinforcer selection. Figure 4 is a cumulative record of competing behavior displayed by the three students during both conditions. Competing behavior was lower during studentselected conditions, versus teacher-selected conditions.

DISCUSSION
Koegel et al. (1999) describe choice-making as one of the pivotal responses that students with autism should engage in to learn more efciently. While the current results are not consistent with suggestions that increasing choice will necessarily increase speed of acquisition, they do agree with earlier ndings (see, e.g., Sigafoos, 1998) that competing behavior is decreased when student choice is introduced. It is important to remember that nothing was lost in the teaching process during either condition, as all programs were worked on during each session. It was only their order that changed. Additionally, reinforcers all came from the same inventory and no special materials were introduced in either condition. The seemingly subtle difference in teaching programs was enough to lead to the observed decrease in competing behavior.
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Figure 1. Percent correct responding on teaching programs across teacher-directed and student-directed conditions.
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Figure 2. Percent correct responding on teaching programs across teacher-directed and student-directed conditions.
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Figure 3. Percent correct responding on teaching programs across teacher-directed and student-directed conditions.
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Figure 4. Cumulative frequency of competing behavior across teacher-directed and student-directed conditions.
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The lack of a difference in skill acquisition between teacher-selected and studentselected conditions may have been an artifact of the relatively rapid acquisition displayed by each student. Had the programs been more difcult, a split between the two conditions might have been more apparent. We deliberately opted not to choose more difcult tasks, however, so as to approximate typical teaching conditions. When skills are targeted for teaching, this is generally done based upon the appropriateness of teaching the skill in question. If a task is of an appropriate difculty level, generally the next skill in a sequence, there is a logical expectation of a relatively high degree of success. It seems that the ability to make a choice was actually the operative variable in levels of competing behavior, if not speed of skill acquisition. Teacher selection was yoked to the previous student selections. If this were only a matter of favored reinforcers or programs, we likely would not have seen this effect. The importance of the decrease in competing behavior can not be overstated in terms of making the teaching situation more pleasant for student and staff. Competing behavior for one of the students, for example, took the form of attempting to kick and scratch the teacher. Reducing such behavior made working with the student much easier, and no doubt increased the reinforcing value of the student to the teachers. This might, in turn, increase reinforcing interactions with the students and might even decrease avoidance behavior on the part of staff (e.g., absenteeism). Increasing student choice has no cost and has the benet of decreasing student resistance to the teaching process. This makes the process more pleasant for all concerned and increases opportunities for students to engage in normalizing activities that will lead to further opportunities for student increases in skill acquisition (Koegel et al., 1999). This, in turn, will reduce the stigma that some still attach to behavioral techniques such as discrete trial teaching (see, e.g., comments detailed in Bloomer, 2000).

REFERENCES
Bloomer H. 2000. ABA robotic? In Words from Those Who Care: Further Case Studies of ABA with People with Autism (pp. 121123), Newman B, Reinecke DR, Newman L (eds), Dove and Orca: New York. Camarata SM, Nelson KE. 1992. Treatment efcacy as a function of target selection in the remediation of child language disorders. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 6: 167178. Dunlap G. 1984. The inuence of task variation and maintenance tasks on the learning and affect of autistic children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 82(1): 1016. Dunlap G, dePerczel M, Clark S, Wilson D, Wright S, White R, Gomez A. 1994. Choice-making to promote adaptive behavior for students with emotional and behavioral challenges. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 24: 505518.
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Koegel LK, Koegel RL, Harrower JK, Carter CM. 1999. Pivotal response intervention I: Overview of approach. Journal of Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps 24(3): 174185. Koegel RL, Koegel LK. 1995. Teaching Children with Autism: Strategies for Initiating Positive Interactions and Improving Learning Opportunities. Brookes: Baltimore. Moes DR. 1998. Integrating choice-making opportunities within teacher-assigned academic tasks to facilitate the performance of children with autism. Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps 23: 319328. Sigafoos J. 1998. Choice making and personal selection strategies. In Antecedent Control: Innovative Approaches to Behavioral Support (pp. 187221), Luiselli JK, Cameron MJ (eds). Brookes: Baltimore. Yoder PJ, Kaiser AP, Alpert C, Fischer R. 1993. Following the child's lead when teaching nouns to preschoolers with mental retardation. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 36: 158167.

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Behav. Intervent. 17: 3141 (2002)