Discriminative Stimulus Social Skills Training: Assisting Students with Behavioral Challenges to Follow Teachers’ Directions
Format
Individual Presentation
Location
Scarbrough 2
Strand #1
Academic Achievement & School Leadership
Strand #2
Social & Emotional Skills
Relevance
Students with emotional and behavioral disorders often have deficits in social skills related to classroom survival skills such as on-task, task completion and following teachers’ directions (Kauffman, 2009: Walker et al., 1995). The identification of interventions that increase the salience of teacher requests and student attention to the requests may increase student success at following teacher directions related to academic and social performance.
Brief Program Description
Viable social skills instruction that impacts related academic success in authentic settings is a concern to many who interact with individuals with disabilities. A video-based social skills instructional procedure and related study will be described. Teachers, clinicians, and parents who attend can expect to be able to describe the steps for developing video-based social skills instruction, and to assess its effectivenss.
Summary
The video modeling approach to be presented can provide teachers and other practitioners a pragmatic and cost effective way to deliver social skills instruction, including that related to classroom survival skills. Increasing the salience of practitioner requests, as in the study to be presented, can increase the likelihood that students can access reinforcers associated with compliance and engagement. Upon completion of this presentation, participants will be able to: • Describe procedures for designing and presenting video-based instruction. • Describe the elements of effective modeling • Describe procedures for measuring the target behaviors (i.e., following directions, on-task, academic engagement) • Describe the research method for evaluating a functional relationship between the instructional model and the dependent variables The research question: Do video-based models of teacher prompts increase participants’(a) compliance to teacher requests in vivo, and (c) task engagement? A multiple baseline across participants design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of 2 independent experiments. The first experiment used the DS-SST, which included teacher prompts on video and participants’ identification of correct responses. A second experiment used a traditional SST approach (live modeling and rehearsal). Measures: following directions, on-task, engagement. Results indicated improved compliance and on-task for DS-SST and improved on-task for the traditional SST. A discussion will include the theoretical and pragmatic aspects of the video models and discrimination training.
Evidence
Students with EBD often exhibit social skills deficits (Kauffman, 2009: Walker et al., 1995). The research literature relevant to this presentation is theoretically tied to ABA and factors that promote generalization, particularly multiple stimulus exemplars (Stokes and Baer, 1977), and to social learning theory (Bandura, 1977). Some individuals may fail to imitate a model because they have “discrimination failures” (Bandura, 1969) of relevant stimuli (e.g., a teacher request) that may compete with attention, and discrimination of, relevant stimuli. Numerous studies have used video to enhance engagement and/or compliance of students with behavioral challenges (Embregts, 2002).
Biographical Sketch
Dr. Clees is an Associate Professor of SPecial Education at the University of Georgia. His teaching and research is focused on applied behavior analysis, behavioral disorders, intellectual disablilities, social skills instruction and self-management.
Dr. Greene is an Instructor of Special Education at the University of Georgia. He specializes in behavioral disorders, academic skills and behavioral disorders.
Keyword Descriptors
Social Skills Instruction, Video Modeling, Following Teacher-Directions, Exceptional Learners
Presentation Year
2015
Start Date
3-3-2015 2:45 PM
End Date
3-3-2015 4:00 PM
Recommended Citation
Clees, Tom J. and Greene, Erik B. Ph.D., "Discriminative Stimulus Social Skills Training: Assisting Students with Behavioral Challenges to Follow Teachers’ Directions" (2015). National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference. 111.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar_savannah/2015/2015/111
Discriminative Stimulus Social Skills Training: Assisting Students with Behavioral Challenges to Follow Teachers’ Directions
Scarbrough 2
Viable social skills instruction that impacts related academic success in authentic settings is a concern to many who interact with individuals with disabilities. A video-based social skills instructional procedure and related study will be described. Teachers, clinicians, and parents who attend can expect to be able to describe the steps for developing video-based social skills instruction, and to assess its effectivenss.
