Around the world people are using TAGteach to help children and adults learn new skills.
This article comes from Luca Canever, an educator and Level 3 TAGteacher from Verona, Italy. He shares his knowledge, dedication and love of positive reinforcement techniques at his website, TAGteach Italia.
Luca tells how he came up with great reinforcement ideas for his entire class (group reinforcement!), and how he used TAGteach to help students with specific problem areas. Here is his story.
TAGteach at school: Reinforcing the group
Managing the reinforcement for a group of people is one of the major difficulties that we may encounter. Especially if the people in question are 20 kids, 11 years old, with interests and personalities different from each other.
For the last two months I’ve been working in a school as a teacher. For the first time, I have the chance to use the marker with a large group — a group with no particular desire to be at school! How can we reinforce them? Some of the kids enjoy candies, some others like beads or extra time for recess. There are (they exist!) students who find study itself reinforcing, but, they are very, very, very rare.
What are the other essential conditions, and who discovered them?
America’s most influential behavioral scientist and the founder of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), Dr. B.F. Skinner, described the three essential conditions of an effective teaching program. They are:
These conditions are as important for children with autism and other disabilities as they are for typically developing children. Luckily, we now have TAGteach (Teaching with Acoustical Guidance), so let’s see how TAGteach meets these three essential criteria. First we’ll discuss how TAGteach addresses the need for immediate feedback, then we’ll talk about the other ones.
Immediate Feedback
When learning a skill, immediate feedback on whether your response is correct or incorrect is essential to effective learning. Why? Because, when you know instantly that you did something right, you feel success! You will do that good thing again, and you will be willing to try the next step because you have a history of success.
In contrast, delays in feedback lead to delays in learning. If you’re not sure, or it you feel uncertain, you won’t know which action was correct. You won’t feel confident when another task is presented. The delay results in confusion and dismay, which negatively affect learning.
Dr. Skinner describing optimum conditions for human learning
This fascinating six minute video from 1954 shows Dr. B.F. Skinner discussing the advantages of learning machines.
He describes how immediate feedback “…leads most rapidly to formation of the correct behavior,” and has a “motivating effect.”
Since the student moves through the program at his or her own pace, the student “…moves at the rate which is most effective for him.”
Finally, with a carefully constructed program, the student goes from the initial stage of being “unfamiliar” with a subject to the final stage in which he is “competent.” He achieves this through a series of very small, successful steps.
Thus the three essential conditions for effective learning are:
immediate feedback
moving at the child’s pace
learning in many small steps
For more information about Dr. Skinner and his extensive contributions to science, please see the B.F. Skinner Foundation.
TAGteach (Teaching with Acoustical Guidance) is an application of ABA that delivers these three essential conditions for learning. See information below.
What is TAGteach?
TAGteach stands for Teaching with Acoustical Guidance. TAGteach is a teaching and communication method based on the scientific principles of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA).
TAGteach enables extremely precise positive reinforcement of behavior by using an acoustical signal to “mark” the behavior – at the precise moment the child performs the behavior! The acoustical signal is a short, sharp sound made by a handheld device (the “tagger”). When the child performs the correct action, the parent/instructor immediately presses the button on the tagger and hands over a treat (candy, treat, token, praise, social recognition, or money) as a reinforcer.
With TAGteach, it is easy to reinforce behaviors precisely and quickly. The immediate, accurate feedback and positive reinforcement result in the child performing the correct action more often, and for longer periods of time. With immediate feedback and learning tasks broken down into small steps, children can learn many new skills with TAGteach — at their own pace.
If you are an autism parent, you probably want to help your kid learn new skills.
If you want to help your kid learn new skills, you may not be aware of the “acoustical” support.
You may not be aware that the acoustical support is a great way to help kids with autism learn, even the severe kids, the nonverbal kids and the super-sensory kids.
And guess what else? It’s easy, effective and low-cost — a rare combination in the autism world.
So what exactly is an acoustical support?
An acoustical support is a neutral sound: a tap, click or ping. The sound is communication. The sound tells a child that she has done something right–at the precise moment she does it! The sound tells her, “YES, you did it, and now you are getting a reward.” The sound gives her success and makes her feel good. The sound makes her want to do that great thing again.
Here’s an example: increasing play skills
Let’s say your child has just touched a toy. Since many kids with autism don’t play with toys, we want them to learn how. Now your child has just touched a toy. That’s great! That’s the first step. With your handy TAGteach tagger, immediately press it to “tag” her action of touching the toy. Right after that, hand over a reinforcer (something she really likes).
Guess what? She’ll figure out very quickly that she got attention, success and a very nice treat from Mom when she touched the toy. And then guess what? She’ll try touching again. Maybe she’ll touch another toy, or touch the toy for a longer period of time. You’re on your way to expanding her play skills.
Your beautiful child with autism erupted into a tantrum.
You don’t know why. It’s the second or third tantrum of the day.
You want to help. You wish you could do something to calm him down.
What can you do? Here’s a way to calm down your child in less than half an hour that won’t drain your energy. I’ll explain what to do, then tell you why this works.
Here’s what to do in the first 5 minutes
Gather your materials
Find something in your house that makes a quick, sharp click sound: a ballpoint pen, a flashlight, or if need be, a spoon that you can tap on the wall or a table.
Get some treats that your child likes: very small pieces of candy, pretzel pieces, cereal pieces, tic-tacs, or anything similar. Put them into a small container that you can hold in your hand
Probably this question pops up dozens of times a day. When my son was little, I would think about what happened earlier in the day, whether he was upset about something that happened yesterday, or if he was bored or something else.
I tried to figure out reasons for his behavior by looking at what happened BEFORE the behavior.
I had it all wrong
In the early years I didn’t know enough about behavioral science. I had heard that ABA was the recommended treatment for autism, and I thought positive reinforcement was a nice idea, but I didn’t understand the most important thing.
It’s not what happens BEFORE the behavior, it’s what happens AFTER.
Why is he doing that? Because of the Consequence!
The most important fact to know about behavioral science is that CONSEQUENCE of an action is the thing to think about. The CONSEQUENCE of an action determines whether that behavior will happen again — or not. If the CONSEQUENCE is pleasant, the behavior will occur again. We all do many things every day. The actions that result in nice, pleasing consequences are what we will do again. This is how all living things respond to their environments.
If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. How else can we decide if something is safe, pleasing or worthwhile? We know because of the consequence. Touch the hot stove, and you’ll be careful near the stove in the future.
Open the refrigerator door, see some nice food and you’ll open it again.
If the food in the refrigerator is always old and rotten, you will stop looking there for food.
Like everyone else, our kids with autism need to develop these skills.
How can you help your child increase the strength and dexterity of her hands and fingers?
Fine motor exercises will do the job, but sometimes it’s difficult for our kids with autism to do them. Here is an expert article on fine motor skills and some practical suggestions for doing them with kids with autism.
8 Activities to Help Young Children Develop Fine Motor Skills
This article by Erica Patino, of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, has proven ideas for hands-on activities to increase fine motor skills. While some of our kids with autism may be able to do these activities, others may not due to sensory or attention issues. Let’s see how to tackle these problems with the always useful and flexible TAGteach approach.
The word “environment,” has been a top subject in the news for decades. We know about natural environments like forests and rivers, and urban environments with streets and buildings. These are tangible, visible environments. But tangible objects are not the only features of an environment.
External factors
Included in every environment are external factors influencing the life and activities of plants, animals and people. These factors are elements that cannot be seen, and include things like knowledge, resources and skills. For a child with autism, the most important environment is this “invisible” environment.
What is the invisible environment of a child with autism?
This environment is made up of all the interactions and consequences that the child experiences each day. The impact of this environment on the future growth and development of the child is enormous. A supportive environment with access to knowledge, resources and skills can help both the child and the family learn important skills. A chaotic environment will help neither the child nor the parents, and may cause damage. Children with autism may display various challenging and dysfunctional behaviors. Everyday life can be hard for them due to the communication deficits and sensory issues that are part of the autism condition.
Teaching a child with autism is a challenging task that requires teams of specialists from multiple disciplines, yet most of us do not have access to such teams due to financial and bureaucratic obstacles. So how can parents help their children with autism and provide a supportive learning environment?
This is actually fun to do. I found that one way to help my son with autism calm down was to reward him for breathing. You heard that right: I reward my child for breathing. I’ll show you how this works as part of a calm-down technique.
You can try it too, and when your friends are sitting around talking about the latest lame brain parenting ideas, you can tell them about this one. And, before slap their foreheads and moan that this idea has to be the ultimate candidate for the Lame Brain Parenting Hall of Fame, tell them the reason.
On the surface, the idea of rewarding a kid for breathing seems preposterous. But let’s look at how important breathing is. Descriptions of breathing tell us a great deal about the emotional state of a person, for example: panicky breaths, labored breathing, gasping for air, or holding one’s breath with suspense. A sigh can be a sigh of relief, a sigh of grief, or a sigh of resignation.
And what do people who attend meditation and yoga classes learn to do? They learn to control and regulate their breathing to achieve a calm emotional state and reduce stress.
Kids with autism often agitated
Now, let’s look at our kids with autism. Our kids experience neurological and sensory feelings that we do not experience and that we can neither comprehend nor relate to. We know our kids experience sound, light, and movement in a different way, and that these sensory issues can create problems for them. We also know our kids with autism can be quickly overwhelmed by the combination of sensory issues and performance demands, with the result that they become angry and agitated.
TAGteach goes international
