Re: Digest Number 1050-RE:Bruner's reported analysis of verbal behavior

[Guest guest]

> > Chomsky spoke about the innatness of the linguistic act considering

> >a normal functioning language organ. Autistic children don't have it.

>

>

> The " it " has not been found in anyone. It is merely a hypothesis.

> If " it " does not exist in autistic children, then they shouldn't be

> learning to speak grammatically (which many of them do).

Language organ is not a one-system as a whole. Some children can't speak

semantically, but thay can do syntactically. And I'm not speaking only about

autism, but about SLI aswell.

It also

> would seem to indicate that there's not much hope that they can learn

> (which would be an unfortunate assumption).

It's only a case of innatness. If you have your right hand disabled, you can

learn to write with your left hand even if you are right handed. I think the

same happends with autism.

>

>

> >In that case, there's no discution about the theory.

> > ANalyzing skinner's approach, I think he is taking in account

> differnt functions a child needs to learn a language. For instance,

> echoic and immitation may help the child analize the rotes he is

> percieving. I think this is the way we can help a child leave echoic

> repertoir. Immitating each word individually from the sentence, and

> linking it to a picture (tact).

> > Other problem autistic children have, is the inhability to get cue )

> validity; that is get the regularities from the chaos.

>

>

> Can you add some further clarification here?

If one of us, suddenly, is left in India for example, may be we should find

difficult to understand what's going on there. Language, customs, the way

people behave, the way they eat, the way they great is quite different. But

very soon we are going to understand and induvidualise words, regularities,

how they perceive their world. This is something autistic children find very

difficult. You can read Mac whinney's readinigs like " the teachability of

language " .

>

>

> >And may be this affect syntax learning. We have to teach them every

> >rule, every structure, every way of interaction.

>

>

> Children with autism have demonstrated both generalization and the

> novel coming together of different repertoires.

Yes, I agree with you, but which rules, which structures?. Once he learn a

valid structure he can generalize very quickly, but wrong structures aswell.

This is the role of behavior modification.

Please see below:

>

> Eikeseth, S., & , T. (1992). The development of functional and

> equivalence classes in high-functioning autistic children: The role

> of naming. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 58, 123-

> 133.

> Brief summary of article

>

> Four children, already in the UCLA autism project for at least one

> year participated. Their ages ranged from 3 years 6 months to 5

> years 6 months. Prior to the beginning of this study the children

> had been taught a variety of skills related to generalized identity

> matching, generalized imitation of verbal stimuli and expressive

> naming of visual objects. All children had at least some language

> and minimal behavioral problems at the time of the study. As well

> the children's visual-spatial and writing skills were average to

> above average.

>

> Teaching towards functional equivalence classes requires that some

> but not all of the formal relationships between two or more stimuli

> sets are taught and skill in responding to the non-trained

> relationships is assessed. If the skill is present then learning of

> emergent relationships is said to have occurred.

>

> While there are many variations regarding stimulus equivalence the

> most common example relates to the idea of:

>

> If A = B

> and B = C

> then A = C

>

> You teach A = B and B = C and test to see if the child can correctly

> respond when you present A = C.

>

> The study found that in general the children did better with the

> untrained relations when they were taught to say the label for each

> stimulus. Once mastery using named objects occurred success was

> variable when new unnamed stimuli sets were introduced.

>

> Devany, J., , S., & , R. (1986). Equivalence class

> formation in language-able and language-disabled children. Journal

> of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 46, 243-257

>

>

>

>

> >THe more schemas he learn, the better he is able to perform in

> interaction. As you see, I'm mixing a cognitive approach and

> behaviorist approach (skinner should be crazy with me jejejeje). It

> helped me a lot, and I believe it's the best way to help these

> children

> >

> > na

>

>

> Nothing wrong with exploring the fine work that's been done in

> various fields. We'll likely get a lot further in our own work if we

> look at what other professionals have discovered. We should,

> however, challenge assumptions when we see them being made.

>

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