Teaching Listener Responding and Imitation Programs? Take a Look at This.
4 Ideas for starting off on the right foot with Imitation and LR programs.
A month or so back, I introduced a well-received article on the first steps to teaching a learner to match in an array. I was provoked to write the article thanks to seeing so many clinicians start by having a learner match pictures in small arrays. We often found that the learner didn’t always grasp the concept. Months into a learner’s authorization, they had become prompt dependent, began to engage in scrolling behavior, and/or were making a lot of the same mistakes. The reason for these setbacks was not related to prompting procedures or reinforcement schedules. Instead, it had to do with our not starting the matching process at the right phase. When introduced, the matching task was way too hard for them, and it needed to be scaled back to a more simplistic level.
There are a variety of reasons that clinicians aren’t starting their learners at a simplistic level. First, they don’t know to consider the correct component skills (and here’s how you do that). Second, they use milestones from the assessments they have conducted as starter goals for whatever skill areas they are tackling. This is important because assessments—in most cases—do not constitute a full curriculum. Milestones and benchmarks are not goals. If you are a clinician, using the “plug and play” method with your assessment can put you and your learner in a world of hurt.
These same issues are present when clinicians introduce imitation and listener responding (LR) programs, too. Again, the clinician starts at level far too difficult and it becomes too much for the learner to grasp. The clinician moves the learner up or down the prompt hierarchy each week, but the learner consistently doesn’t grasp the skill. Imitation and LR skills are building blocks for early intervention ABA programs. However, it can be difficult to figure out how and where to get started.
So, what are we looking for when we teach these skills? It’s important to understand the primary goal of getting a learner to complete an imitation or listener responding task.
For imitation, it’s not the task or the output itself that is valuable to us. If we target and model waving our hands in circles, for example, our purpose isn’t to teach the learner to wave their hands in circles. What we’re really interested in is getting the learner to wave their hands when we do it. It’s their seeing an action, then their doing that action. That’s the “muscle” we’re trying to work on.
The same goes for listener responding skills. If we’re targeting an LR goal where we want the learner to hold up three fingers when we ask them to, we’re not really that interested in getting them to hold up three fingers. Instead, we’re interested in getting them to hold up three fingers when we ask them to. It’s their hearing something, then doing it that matters.
Here are some ideas for starting off on the right track in regard to imitation and LR:
Start with preferred tasks and preferred items. Gross motor movement like clapping and jumping can seem arbitrary to a kid who doesn’t enjoy clapping and jumping. Work on tasks that the learner loves to engage in. This pairs your voice and/or model with the preferred activity. It also suggests to them that you are all for getting them to do what they want to do. Finally, it gets them used to the process or sequence of events for how you’ll train them in imitation and LR in the long run. For example, you might have them imitate pushing the “play” button on their tablet to access a preferred video. Certainly, they would perform the task on their own, but this is a great starting point for them to learn the process.
Familiar routines. Next you can introduce imitation or LR tasks during a highly probable task. These are tasks that are so familiar to the learner that they already know how to engage in them and does so frequently. The difference here is these tasks might not be as highly valued. Instead, the learner has done them so many times already and displays fluency. For example, you might introduce an imitation or LR task for: taking their coat off when they come inside, flushing the toilet, getting a fork when it’s time to eat, putting on shoes, throwing away a paper towel after hand-washing, etc. Watch what they do all day and pull from daily routines that the learner has mastered.
Uni-functional objects. Next, have them complete actions using uni-functional objects. Uni-functional objects are objects that only have one function which allows the learner to “infer” or “adduce” the correct response. These critical features of the items themselves encourage a certain kind of response. A ring-stacker with a couple of rings already on it, for example, might encourage a learner to put another ring on it should you hand them one. Other examples might include: a shape and a shape sorter, a pop up toy with buttons, a jack in the box with a crank, a ball and a hoop, and so on. Once they have mastered out imitation and LR tasks with several uni-functional toys, put the uni-functional toys in a field with each other and have them work on the tasks again using the other toys as distractors. At this point, your voice and/or your model become vital for them to perform the correct response.
Multi-functional objects. Now that your learner is getting the hang of imitating and performing LR tasks in an array with uni-functional objects, it’s time to start looking at multi-functional objects, too. In contrast with uni-functional objects, multi-functional objects are ones that you can perform a variety of actions with. Because of that, it’s a bit harder for the learner to adduce the correct response. This puts them in more of a situation where your voice or model matters. Examples might include a ball (you can roll, bounce, throw, kick it, etc.), play-doh (you can pound, roll, and flatten it), or an action figure (you can make the figure jump, spin, flip, etc.). Once you have seen some mastery with multi-functional items, you can begin to put them in a field of other multi-functional and uni-functional toys, as well. You can also begin to start targeting gross motor movements, too!
Initially, the learner recognizes what to do because they have a past history with the task or routine (like putting on their shoes). In the ensuing steps, they figure it out because certain critical features of the item itself remind them of the correct behavior (like the ring-stacker). Finally, as you increase the field size with uni-functional and multi-functional toys, there is an increased need for them to zero in on the context even further. To the point they attend to your model or your instruction.
It’s important to remember that every learner is different and every approached needs to be tailored to that learner. However, this a is general framework for imitation and LR programming that I like to use.
Additionally, I recommend reading Johnson and Bulla’s (2021) article on the importance of setting up your arrays correctly. They also touch on critical and variable features which I talked about above (and will touch on more in the coming weeks).
Also Layng’s (2019) offering on concept analysis as well.
You all have been so interactive and I want to thank you for it! Keep hitting me back with your thoughts. As always, share and subscribe to this newsletter—it’s what keeps it going!
Johnson K, Bulla AJ. Creating the Components for Teaching Concepts. Behav Anal Pract. 2021 Jul 29;14(3):785-792. doi: 10.1007/s40617-021-00626-z. PMID: 34631382; PMCID: PMC8458507.
Layng TVJ. Tutorial: Understanding Concepts: Implications for Behavior Analysts and Educators. Perspect Behav Sci. 2018 Dec 7;42(2):345-363. doi: 10.1007/s40614-018-00188-6. PMID: 31976438; PMCID: PMC6701481.