A Review Of Behavior Modification Essay Research

Paper

The concept of modeling as a technique for behavior modification was first introduced in the 1960’s by Albert Bandura. His later works demonstrated simply watching another individual receive reinforcement for a particular behavior would later increase the rates of a given behavior in the viewer as well as the model. Much work has been done on the concept of modeling since the pioneering work of Bandura.

Research on modeling has not been limited to behavior modification. Advances in modeling have allowed researchers to extend the work into a variety of skills including motor behaviors such as swimming, social behaviors such as conversation, and even to emotional problems such as anxiety.

Technology allows a wide variety of skills to be taught by video. Teaching by video has further evolved to include modeling by others as well as self’ modeling. While both techniques have been used, debated, and evaluated, little research has been done to determine the efficacy of one method in comparison to the other.

Recently an interest in the use of video modeling with autistic individuals has emerged. These individuals typically exhibit severe attentional, social, affective, language, and motivational problems. This makes autistic individuals a challenging group to instruct.

Limited research indicates autistic children learn a variety of positive behaviors, including conversational speech, more quickly and with better generalization with video modeling than from live modeling. Only one recent study using video self’ modeling has been used with autistic children. The results warrant further investigation.

A study was designed to test the efficacy of video modeling to teach conversational skills to autistic children. Both self’ modeling and other’ modeling video techniques were used to test the efficacy of the two types of modeling.

The test included five male children with autism. They had been tested extensively to determine presence and severity of autism as well as verbal abilities. All participants had expressive language skills and could speak spontaneously in short sentences.

The other’ modeling group was composed of six typically developing gender and chronologically appropriate children, who served as peer models in the videos. A set of twenty questions was compiled for each child. Eight questions were used in videos of self’ modeling and eight were used in videos of other’ modeling. The remaining four questions were used as pre and post generalization probes.

Videos were produced showing both the test group and the other’ model group responding correctly to the test questions. Videos were edited to show correct responses to the test questions.

Videos were shown to the test group three times before going to sleep in the evening. Self’ and other’ tapes were shown on alternate days. A therapist visited the home following a viewing day and asked the questions appropriate for the video viewed the previous evening. The process continued until the participant reached a correct response level of 100% or failed to show an increase in response over several weeks.

Overall results were variable. Two participants responded positively to video treatment. One reached acquisition level with the other’ video, but not with the self’ video. The 100% acquisition level was not attained by two of the children. The overall acquisition level was not improved by self’ videos as opposed to other’ videos.

Video modeling can be a useful technique for teaching conversation speech to some autistic children. Results suggest the video modeling method may be more beneficial to those students who possess a greater visual learning ability. Test findings also suggest using other’ as a model is equally as effective as using self’ as a model.