Psychology-Principles of Fading, Shaping, Punishment, Escape and Avoidance Conditioning

Psychology-Principles of Fading, Shaping, Punishment, Escape and Avoidance Conditioning

Question 1

Scripts and script-fading procedures are useful to students who are more- and less-severely disabled, and to readers and nonreaders. Some important characteristics of scripts are that they can (and should) be individualized to take into account each young person's current language skills, his or her special interests, and the favorite conversation topics and special pursuits of family members and peers.

After a young person learns to imitate audiotaped scripts or to read written scripts, the scripts are faded by removing the last word, then the next-to-last word, and so on, until there are no words remaining. When faded, the audiotaped script “I like trucks” becomes “I like,” then “I,” and then a blank audiotape that has been erased. The written script “I'm learning to shave” is faded to “I'm learning to,” “I'm learning,” “I'm,” and then a blank piece of paper. And eventually, the blank audiotape or blank piece of paper is also removed. At each step in the fading process, it is important to observe whether a child or teen continues to say the script or uses words that have not yet been faded to create a new phrase or sentence. For example, when the script “I like trucks” is faded to “I like,” some children continue to say “I like trucks,” but others may produce new statements, such as “I like cars” or even “I like donuts.”

After many scripts have been presented and faded, most children do one or more of the following: (a) they continue to say the scripts, although the scripts are absent; (b) they combine parts of the scripts with other scripts, or with language that was modeled by their conversation partners, thereby producing novel statements; or (c) they display generative language by saying things that were neither scripted nor modeled by their current conversation partners, but that were previously learned, either via formal instruction or by observing others' conversation.

For children who are non-readers, scripts can be audiotaped on cards and played on magnetic card readers.

A child places a card in a slot on the card reader and the card automatically runs through the machine to play the previously recorded script. Scripts may also be presented on small, button-activated recorders such as those used in toys. For children who are readers, scripts are selected on the basis of each youngster's reading skills. As a child's reading repertoire expands, scripts are gradually lengthened from a one-word script such as “ball” to phrases and sentences.

Initially, when children begin to use scripts, it is useful to enlist the help of two adults. One adult serves as prompter and the other as conversation partner. It is important to separate these roles because in typical social interaction, conversation partners do not verbally prompt one another. Often, the two-to-one adult-child ratio is quite temporary; many children soon learn the relevant responses without the help of a prompter.

When teaching first audiotaped scripts to non-readers, materials ...