Re: Teaching discrimination for PECS

August 6, 2001

At 06:43 PM 7/30/01 -0400, MMacGregor@... wrote:

>Any ideas out there on how to teach my 4yo dd to discriminate consistently

>with the PECS icons? When she pays attention and is focussed, she's able

>to do it fairly well, but that happens so rarely!!!

I don't know if you have access to the Bondy and Frost Training Manual, but

Appendix 2 is devoted entirely to tips for successful discrimination

training, in addition to the procedures they outline for running Phase III

of a PECS training regimen.

You may with to try errorless techniques with positional prompts (placing

the picture of the highly preferred or contextually appropriate item closer

than the other and gradually closing the distance) or prompting via size

(making the highly preferred item significantly larger than the other and

gradually reducing the size difference).

In addition, if you're using rather small symbols, you may find that simply

increasing the size of pictures overall might help.

Also, I've had luck reinforcing the association between the picture and the

item, by showing the picture back to the child once he has exchanged it

with me. " Oh, you want _water_ " (holding the water picture up beside my

face as I say this). This is pretty standard though, so I'm likely not

telling you anything new with this.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

M. Wallin

Polyxo.com: Teaching Children with Autism

Recommended Posts