BEGINNING MAND TRAINING

This clip demonstrates a 20 month old child starting treatment.  You will see his first day and a couple of months after mand training or natural environment training.  He attends on a part time basis.  When he started treatment he imitated a few sounds and one or two words.  You will notice in the first clip, the trainer does not force the child to interact with any specific toy but tries to follow the child's lead and manipulate the environment to get a social or communicative exchange from the child.  On his first day of treatment, as would be expected, he tends to cry when he wants a toy.  The trainer reinforces communicative attempts by contingently delivering the reinforcer when the child says "ah", or gives her eye-contact. She is simply trying to teach that a communicative attempt (appropriate behavior) will get the child the item (rather than inappropriate).

The follow-up clips shows the child 2 months  into therapy and demonstrate how the child has readily learned to sign for desired items such as car and book and is using words to request music as well as make verbal approximations for other items.  He is no longer frustrated and understands the communication game.  By this time he has had thousands of attempts to communicate and we have strengthened his imitative repertoire both vocally and physically to help his production of speech. For example, outside of his NET training, he also does one minute language samples daily to get some imitative control over his vocalizations, responds to the use visual cues such as signing and written cues, imitative exercises, and much more. His behaviors have reduced and he can "play" for long periods of time without frustration.  He is also requesting spontaneously without the use of prompts (a very important training component). You will also notice he is working with another trainer, this is important for generalization. The trainer is also giving the car contingent upon his request and encouraging communication in a natural play setting.  In clips 4 & 5 (taken a day after clips 2& 3) you will see the child is using vocalizations to request for desired items.  He says "music", "pan", and "b" for banana!