Matrix Training for Expanding the Communication of Toddlers and Preschoolers With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) typically exhibit a range of social communication deficits. Presequenced stimulus arrangements, such as matrix training, can be used to facilitate generative responding. Accordingly, training procedures can lead to the acquisition of a greater number of targets that are not taught explicitly, with fewer learning trials. Matrix training provides a useful framework for selecting teaching targets to promote the emergence of untaught skills. Participants were 3 young boys diagnosed with ASD, who were taught noun-verb combinations of play actions as tact and listener responses. All participants learned the taught noun-verb targets and showed varying degrees of recombinative generalization to untaught targets. Across subsequent matrices, the rate of acquisition of new targets and the number acquired without direct teaching increased (i.e., recombinative generalization). This suggests matrix training stimulus arrangements can facilitate the acquisition of novel targets by teaching young children with ASD to recombine language components appropriately. Communication deficits are common in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and can often take the form of limited spoken language, including limited vocabulary or short utterances (i.e., single words; APA, 2013). Behavioral interventions aimed at improving communication deficits often emphasize the use of discrete trial teaching in which a discriminative stimulus (e.g., presentation of toy plane) precedes the correct response (e.g., spoken word "plane") and is promptly followed by the delivery of a rein-forcer (e.g., social praise, preferred tangible or edible). Such an approach is widely used in early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) and has been shown to be effective in teaching children with ASD (Lovaas, 1987). This approach, however, has been criticized for producing "rote learning." That is, individuals tend to emit the same communicative response (e.g., tacting "plane") in the presence of the discriminative stimulus (e.g., toy plane), despite the presence of other relevant antecedent stimuli such as the therapist making flying actions with the plane and providing the instruction to say what the item is doing (i.e., the child is asked to tact noun-verb combinations). Rote responding can be particularly problematic when teaching functional language to children with ASD, who are inclined to engage in repetitive patterns of behavior and may have difficulty generalizing learned skills to novel situations (APA, 2013; Stokes & Baer, 1977). The functional use of language requires individuals to employ learned words and sentence structures in novel and flexible ways. The use of generative instruction has been touted as an alternative teaching strategy, aimed at generating the maximum novel repertoire after teaching the minimum number of skills (Alessi, 1987; Goldstein, 1983). Using generative instruction for communication skills, such as matrix training, instructors teach a subset of skills Highlights • Matrix training, a form of generative instruction, refers to the arrangement and selection of teaching targets so that few targets are directly taught and novel combinations can be assessed for generalization. • The use of matrix training promotes recombinative generalization in individuals with ASD and intellectual disabilities. • Matrix training can be useful in generating a flexible use of language (e.g., novel noun-verb combinations) in young children with ASD. • Future work evaluating whether recombinative generalization across op-erants occurs under matrix training arrangements is warranted.