The influence of motivation and response competition on the generalized use of a newly learned requesting form in three children with severe disabilities

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate the generalized use of a newly learned form for requesting objects and actions by three young children with severe language deficits. A within-subject multiple baseline consisting of three stimulus categories of opportunities to request was used for each child. During baseline probes, all children used forms such as reaching, grabbing, or leading to make requests. They then were taught a new functionally equivalent form in an isolated situation under restricted conditions. That is, the item requested, the trainer, and the setting were always the same and remained completely independent of the natural environment in which generalization data were gathered. The hypothesis of this study was that old forms would interfere with the generalized use of the new form. Probes occurring after training criterion was met on the new form revealed almost exclusive use of the old forms. At this point, extinction of old forms (i.e., old forms were not honored during probes) was introduced in a staggered (i.e., multiple baseline) fashion across the three sets of request opportunities. Two children manifested a dramatic increase and one child displayed a moderate increase in their use of the new form (i.e., generalization occurred). These results demonstrated a functional relation between intervention (i.e., extinction) and the increased use of the new form in the generalization settings for all three children. The unique aspects of this study included: (a) The extension of functional communication training to replace communicative behavior that was not labeled as challenging; (b) the requirement that probe data were gathered only on occasions in which the children demonstrated observable motivation to access objects or events; and (c) the effect of response competition on generalization.