Phase
III – Picture Discrimination
Objective:
The
student will request the desired items by going to a communication board,
selecting the appropriate picture from an array, going to a communication
partner and giving the picture.
Preparing
for Phase III:
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in
addition to having pictures of desired items, you should now identify and
get pictures of non-desired items |
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non-desired
items could be those that the student dislikes or shows no interest in, or
are contextually irrelevant (such as a shoe during snack time) |
|
no
verbal prompts are used during this phase |
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rotate
the position of the pictures on the communication board so that the student
does not learn to identify them by their location (this will discourage looking) |
Training
Procedures:
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present
the student with one desired item and one strongly disliked,
non-preferred item |
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at
first, pair the pictures with the real objects (i.e., by placing the picture
between the object and the student) |
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almost
immediately, try to fade away the real objects and just present the student
with the pictures |
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give
the student the object that corresponds with the given picture (even if it
is the non-preferred or contextually irrelevant item); you can then say
“You asked for the shoe” or “You want the shoe” – wait a few
seconds and then return the two pictures to the board when the student
responds to the non-preferred item, point to the desired item and say “If
you want a cookie, you need to ask for a cookie” |
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if
this occurs continually, check that the student is, in fact, interested in
the “desired item” |
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you
can also start reducing the size of the pictures to ¾” – 1” |
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correspondence
checks: every once in a while let the student take the requested item after
giving you the picture. This
will tell you whether or not the student is making the connection between
the picture and its corresponding object |
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once
the student has learned to look at the pictures and to discriminate between
them, start adding more pictures to the board so that the student learns to
request from a variety of pictures |
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continue
doing this until the student can discriminate amongst 1 - 20 pictures |
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at
this point, you can develop theme boards and place in the environment or in
a book (or both) |
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you
may also want to start putting desired objects out of reach to increase
opportunities for requesting |
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the
student is ready to move on to Phase IV once s/he is able to discriminate
between a variety of pictures and is able to request a preferred choice from
amongst a group of pictures |
