yes/no regression

[Guest guest]

We had to resort to putting pieces of candy in my daughter's mouth for

reinforcement because she would play and smudge it all over her fingers and

clothes.

As far as Yes/ No program - we did this program initially without forcing her to

eat something she said Yes for and it didn't work. She was saying 'Yes' for

everything and when we gave the food to her she would throw it away or move her

head away. This was not enough motivation to learn 'No'. When our consultant

recommended forcing her to eat ( we don't actually make her eat but we pretend

that we are forcing her to eat) that was aversive enough for her to learn No

within a few trials. Fortunately she learnt it rapidly this way so that we had

to do it only 2 or 3 times. I don't regret doing it. 2 of my therapists refused

to do it and I respected that. We did the program with those therapists that

were willing to do it and like I said it didn't take us long.

Every child is different.

Mahija

<jaegs@...> wrote: One of the things that stuck me in your post was

the description of the

therapist putting items in your child's mouth. I see this a lot and

each time I see it, it disturbs me. It seems to me to be really

demeaning to have a child fed by a therapist. Unless there is some

physical reason that the child cannot put an item in their own mouth

they should be doing it themselves. If the therapist wants to control

access to the reinforcers they can place the reinforcer in the child's

hand one at a time.

Just my opinion,

Joanna Jaeger

yes/no regression

This is what happened to my son (yes becoming aversive).

We used olives and onions, which he hates, and skittles & marshmellows,

which he loves, and whenever he said yes to an olive, the CONSULTANT

actually tried to shove it in his mouth. UGGH!! Needless to say, this

was

just so aversive, that he started saying no to everything, even his

beloved

skittles and marshmellows, I think he thought that if he said yes, the

olive

would suddenly appear and be put in his mouth.

So I consulted with one of my ex-THERAPISTS who suggested that we go

back to

the beginning. Skittles alone, mass trialed, to get him to say yes.

Then,

olives alone, mass trialed, to get him to say no. And, this time we did

errorless rather than no no prompt, so we gave him the answers the first

few

times.

Then we rotated the skittles and the olives, prompting the answers

initially, and then he got it with those.

Then we added back in the marshmellows and onions, taught individually

in a

mass trial first, then mixed up with olives and skittles, and he got it.

And then it started generalizing with other things, we didn't have to

teach

him.

It was amazing to me that my son had such difficulties with yes and no,

since he was flying through other programs like occupations, opposites,

and

prepositions, and we taught those many at a time.

So in a way, it was a little disconcerting to go back to such basic

teaching

methods such as mass trialing one response at a time which I thought

he'd

abandoned long ago, but in this case it was simply the quickest and

easiest

way to make the concept perfectly clear to him.

> The thing about doing this is that, while it may make the

>point to the

>student that they get what they say yes to and don't get what they

>say no to,

>it's pretty aversive. I'd rather see you errorlessly prompt the

response

> " no " and take away the aversive item, fading the prompts over

>time. But how

>you teach it specifically will depend on your son. Just a thought.

>

>Best,

>

>

>

>

>

>

>________________________________________

> Burk, M.A.

>Consulting Behavior Analyst (AVB specialization)

> Burk Behavioral Consulting

>www.BurkABA.com

>BurkABA@...

>

>

>