Failing to respond to name calling is one of the common problems in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. As you can imagine, this problem can impact the children in many ways. For example: (1) It reduces the chances of potential social opportunities: Since the child is being unresponsive to his peers, they will not find him/ her being reinforcing to interact with, thus they may less likely to approach or engage with the child in the future. (2) Safety issues: Imagine your child is lost in the community or is further away from the parents, it may be difficult for the parents to provide immediate help due to the child’s lack of response. (3) Independence: It can be challenging when you have to ask your child to carry out tasks in natural settings when there is distance between you and him/her.
The objectives of this skill are to teach the child to attend and respond to other’s social initiation, increasing their environmental and social awareness, as well as peers’ acceptance.
First, we need to decide our expectation in our child’s response. The child’s response can be verbal (e.g. “Yes”, “What’s up?” etc.) or non-verbal (e.g. eye contact, turning towards that person etc.). It is critical to teach our child to respond in a natural, and age appropriate way. In addition, we should choose to start the training with situations where the child is more likely to respond. Below is a general overview of considerations that we keep in mind when we teach the skill:
The nature of this skill is to establish the child’s “first response” when his/ her name is being called. In order to achieve that, we need to carefully select the type of prompts in our teaching. We suggest using Within-stimulus prompts as opposed to other external prompts. Initially, you may call the child’s name in a more exaggerate manner, e.g. louder, being in front of the child, at the student’s eye level, wait for him to look prior to calling his name etc. When your child responds to your name calling, immediately provide a reinforcement; alternatively, if he/ she does not respond, do not provide negative feedback, and wait for a short while to have the next attempt, and provide a prompt as necessary. In earlier phases, we also suggest evaluating the value of the reinforcers regularly (Read more at 15 Rules of Reinforcement Part 1 and Part 2)to ensure the child is motivated to respond to name calling.
Since we are targeting the child’s “first response”, meaning if you have to repeatedly call the child’s name or he/ she can only respond after you provide a negative feedback, this would indicate that the child has not fluidly picked up the skill. You should continue with systematic teaching and provide sufficient practice opportunity. Your goal is to have the child respond to name calling in a consistent and responsive manner across settings and people, even when it is unpredictable.
A parent asked if he/ she should have the child respond to his real name/ nickname? In Hong Kong, nickname is not very common. This has to do with the consideration of the child’s age, learning setting, and may even be what the nickname is. For example, if your child is 7, calling him by his nickname can be quite stigmatizing and age inappropriate in the community; or if the child is at school age, teaching him to respond to his nickname can also be inappropriate.
Hope this article is helpful in providing you some tips in teaching your child to respond to name calling.
Teaching Videos:
Information provided by
Christy LaiM.Sc., BCBA
Autism Partnership Behavioral Consultant
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Ms. Christy Lai is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst with a Master of Science in Applied Behavior Analysis from St. Cloud State University and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Ms. Lai joined Autism Partnership (AP) in 2011 and she has extensive experience in working with children with ASD. Ms. Christy Lai currently take lead of the case supervision in the new established AP Beijing center. At the same time, she oversees the Little Learners program in Hong Kong and Shanghai and consults families in Asia. She directs overseas training to staff in the Train the Trainer program and provides parent education to families with children with ASD. She also conducts Jumpstart and PIIP programs locally and internationally. In additions, she is keen to take part in overseas ASD conferences and take lead of the design and production of AP teaching materials. Moreover, she helps with producing ABA training videos and articles in the APSPARKS website for public education. |
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[:zh]家長疑問：請問兒童應名反應差，在訓練應名反應時喊孩子的名字有需要注意的嗎？比如說該喊兒童的全名還是小名（乳名），尤其是有些兒童的小名與全名相差很大？患有自閉症孩子對自己名字沒有反應或回應度低和慢都是一些家長經常向我們尋幫忙的問題。可想而知，孩子對名字沒有反應固然會帶來很多問題，例如：（1）大大減少社交機會：由於同伴叫孩子或和他說話時，孩子沒有反應，對方可能會感到沒趣，以後找孩子或邀請他一起玩的機會會減少（2）安全問題：假如孩子在社區跟父母走散或跟父母之間有距離時，父母／大人未能倚靠孩子的回應及時提供幫忙（3）影響獨立性：要在家中或其他環境讓孩子獨立執行離座／遠距離任務或常規會變得相對困難等。
教導自閉症兒童應名的目標是要教學生專注和回應別人的主動引發的互動、增加他們對環境和社交的意識、促進社交互動和增加同伴對孩子的接納。
首先，我們要決定我們希望孩子的回應是什麼。孩子的回應可以是語言（例如：「是」、「欸」）或非語言的（例如：眼神、身體轉向對方等）。教導孩子以自然和適齡的方法來回應是關重要。同時，我們應選擇回應度機會率較高的情況下開展訓練。以下是我們一般給學生分解有關課程時的概要，以供各位參考。
此課程的本身是要建立孩子對自己名字的「首個回應」。為了達到目標，在考慮選擇使用哪個／些輔助時，我們建議使用刺激內輔助（Within-stimulus prompt）而非其他外在輔助。開始時，你可以在輔助回合誇張地喊孩子的名字，例如：較大聲、在他面前、在他的水平線上、等他跟你對上眼時等。當孩子應名時，立刻給予強化物；假如孩子未有回應，無須給予反饋，並於稍隔一會後進行下一回合，並給予輔助。在訓練的初階階段，你也有機會需要不時評估當下強化物的價值（參考「強化物十五規則」上及下），確保孩子的回應動機。
此課程的核心是要建立對自己名字的第一個回應，即是需要重複喊孩子名字／給予負面反饋後等的成功回應都是一些顯示孩子未掌握或成功泛化技巧的象徵，宜繼續有系統地提供重複和足夠的練習機會，讓學生能更流暢地表現技巧。你希望孩子能在預期不到的自然情況下，也能迅速一致地回應。
至於有家長問該訓練孩子回應本名還是小名？在這裡，小名／乳名不太普遍。這個問題可能需考慮到孩子的年紀和學習的地方，甚至是小名是什麼，例如：假如孩子七歲，那麼在社區呼他的小名會讓他在社交情境變得突出；舉例考慮到他要上學，那麼喊他小名也未必適合。
希望本文章能幫助大家進一步了解到應名的重要性和方法。
課程示範：
資訊提供:
賴靜理學碩士, 國際認證行為分析師
Autism Partnership 行為分析治療顧問
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賴靜小姐是國際認證行為分析師(BCBA) 並獲有聖克勞德州立大學「應用行為分析」碩士學位及密歇根大學心理學學士學位。她在2011 年加入AP，專注於自閉症兒童的教學工作。 她現時主力為AP北京中心擔任行为分析训练课程监督，同時負責監督和帶領香港及上海的Little Learners（學前教育計劃）及為不同亞洲家庭提供咨詢服務。賴靜小姐亦積極指導海外導師培訓計劃、為育有自閉症孩子的家長提供學習課程、並於香港及海外進行躍進課程及革新密集訓練課程。此外，她亦多次參與海外研討會、帶領創作AP各款教學工具、以及為APSPARKS 自閉症資源網站製作多個ABA 教學視頻及撰寫文章，樂於與大衆分享ABA資訊。 |
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