Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

Fall 12-31-2015

Document Type

Dissertation - NSU Access Only

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Abraham S. Fischler College of Education

Advisor

Christine Reeve

Committee Member

John Billings

Keywords

applied behavior analysis, skill acquisition, prompt dependence, brief assessment, prompts

Abstract

Prompt dependence can be a serious problem for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder or intellectual disabilities. The ability to perform skills independently is important for a high-quality life and assimilation in the community among many other things. Assessments of instructional strategies may be an effective tool for identifying instructional strategies that decrease one’s reliance on prompts. An alternating treatment design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of an assessment of instructional strategies on independent responses during auditory-visual discrimination tasks. Assessment conditions included positional prompt, gestural prompt, physical prompt, and identity matching to sample. The most effective instructional strategy was identified as the strategy that corresponded to quickest acquisition of independent responses. Results of the assessment demonstrated differences in individual learning patterns for each of the 3 participants. However, the differences observed in the assessment among instructional strategies were not significant. Implications of these results do suggest to educators that conducting an assessment of instructional strategies may be a useful strategy for identifying differences in learning patterns. Limitations and directions for future research are also discussed.

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