Ensino de mandos a crianças com Autismo

Abstract

The emission of mands benefits all speakers including children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) allowing them to have access to specific reinforcers. It is also believed that the fluency in the emission of mands can facilitate the learning of other verbal operants and also decrease the frequency of disruptive behaviors. The purpose of this dissertation was based on the teaching of the mand verbal operant for children with ASD and limited verbal repertoire in order to extend the use of more socially appropriate mands and to verify if this had some relation with the emission of disruptive behaviors and with the emission of other verbal operants. Three studies were carried out with complementary objectives and procedures applied to participants within the age group of four to eight years old. In general, the teaching procedure occurred in an individualized way, with baseline and intervention sessions, through mand training with prompting and prompt delay. The delay in the presentation of the prompts occurred in a gradual way, in order to produce opportunities for the child to respond independently and more spontaneously under the control of the motivational operation. The results of the three studies indicated an increase in the average frequency of emission of mands (respectively, from minimum to maximum: 3-135.6; 0.6-50.6; 0.1-9.2), which were related in the reverse direction with the disruptive behaviors. From this teaching, there was still a minimal emergency of tact and intraverbal. However, this study presented limitations, especially in the absence of programming of conditions that promote vocal generalization to other environments, in addition to the teaching environment.