We evaluated two procedures to teach auditory-visual conditional discriminations (receptive labeling) to children with autism. The procedures evaluated a modified Structured Mix (SM) procedure and a modified Counterbalanced Random Rotation (RR) procedure. The modified SM procedure was based on the logic of simplifying the task by breaking it down…

The present study evaluated a systematic instructional package including the system of least prompts (SLP) to teach differentiation and selection of tangible symbols to continue activities for two children with complex support needs and deafblindness (DB). A multiple probe design across three symbols was used to evaluate the intervention package…

The main objective of this article is to analyze the conceptual connection between the Doctrine of Children's Education, briefly mentioned in Spinoza's "Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione" (TIE), and the concept of emendation present at the very center of this Treatise's title. A close textual exegesis of the opening paragraphs of TIE…

This paper investigated how production task combined with teacher feedback (in the form of recasts) affects child second language development, and the effects of task complexity on their production performance. 92 child learners of English in three intact classes were assigned to three tasks of different complexity (simple, +complex, ++complex).…

Children with autism typically have a limited repertoire of activities they engage in during their free time and are often observed to engage in inappropriate or non-functional play. Previous research has suggested that deficits in leisure skills are not only a factor of the diagnosis, but also influenced by structural constraints such as lack of…

This study aims to explore the impact of oral corrective feedback types on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' willingness to communicate across proficiency levels. It also investigates how EFL learners view different types of feedback in relation to their willingness to communicate. Sixty Iranian EFL learners were tracked in four…

Research has identified a variety of effective approaches for responding to errors during discrete-trial training. In one commonly used method, the therapist delivers a prompt contingent on the occurrence of an incorrect response and then re-presents the trial so that the learner has an opportunity to perform the correct response independently.…

Do learners of a second language (L2) need frequent contact with native speakers of that language in order to master its phonology? What if they hear audio recordings of native speakers and receive immediate corrective feedback about their perception? We used a randomized controlled experiment with 135 Chinese speakers (with English as their L2)…

This study investigated the effects of task complexity on child learners' second language (L2) gains, the relationship between aptitude and L2 development, and the extent to which task complexity influences this relationship when recasts are provided. Sixty child EFL learners were assigned to two experimental groups. During the treatment, one…

We evaluated the use of behavioral skills training (BST) to train caregivers to conduct procedures commonly associated with mand training. We trained two caregivers on the following procedures: (a) conducting preference assessments, (b) delivering preferred items contingent on appropriate behavior, (c) capturing and contriving motivating…

Two students with developmental disabilities were taught two daily living skills using video prompting with error correction presented on an iPod Touch, and two different fading procedures were implemented. In one fading procedure, individual video clips were merged into multiple larger clips following acquisition of the entire skill. In the…

In general terms a mand is a requesting response. Teaching children with autism to mand for information is often a difficult task given their language deficits. The present study examined a procedure consisting of contrived motivating operations, prompt fading, manded consequences, error correction, and a brief preference assessment for teaching…

The role of conversational interaction in second language research has increasingly been seen as playing a facilitative role in second language learning. As such there have been a number of studies focussing on different types of interaction, including feedback such as recasts, and their potential role in second language learning. In this study,…

Background: Children who have a combination of language and developmental disabilities with autism often experience major difficulties in learning relations between objects and their graphic representations. Therefore, they would benefit from teaching procedures that minimize their difficulties in acquiring these relations. This study compared two…