Are you using clickers in an autism classroom or a home program and using them incorrectly.
Find out how I recommend using these clickers and what you can start today.
Hi, I'm Dr. Mary Barbera, autism mom, board certified behavior analyst, and bestselling
author of The Verbal Behavior Approach.
Each week I provide you with some of my tips about turning autism around so if you haven't
subscribed to my YouTube channel, you can do that now.
So today I want to talk about clickers and I've used these counter clickers and you can
just Google on Amazon.
I got my first clicker actually before Amazon was even a thing at Staples.
I just went in and asked how they would count people coming in.
And, and so these clickers are great in terms of counting things.
The way I used to use clickers is different than the way I use them now.
So I see a lot of mistakes when using clickers.
I do like the ability to have colored clickers for different behaviors or different things.
Um, but the way I used to use clickers is, um, I had this 1 client, I'll call him Adam,
and he used to have a lot of what I would call defective mands for attention, a lot
of nonsense language.
He would, they say things like, “Ms. Mary has a striped shirt on”, “Can I hop like
a kangaroo?” and he was like in sixth or seventh grade, so it was like constant.
Uh, he would throw up a ball and say, “Adam, stop throwing the ball” and you know, wait
for somebody to go, like stop it, get back on task.
So lot of what I would call nonsense language.
So I gave them a clicker and I said, every time he says something weird like that, I
want you to click and um, don't just click for the whole day and give me a big number
of wow.
I want you to click and every 15 minutes I want you to write down on a sheet, you can
use a loose leaf, what he was doing.
Like if it was math class, if he was typing, if it was the cafeteria for lunch, what he
was, what activity it was in those 15 minutes, and then how many, how many clicks he got,
how much defective language, what actually occurred.
And what I found, uh, after a 3 day assessment using a clicker was that Adam had 500 uh nonsense
language of episodes per school day and that there were high times of, of when he wasn't
engaged with an adult, um, doing a task that kept his mind busy.
The, the rate of his defective language would go way up.
And when he was engaged, like for instance, typing class, these clicks would be almost
0.
So what we did there was we, uh, doubled his typing time.
We looked at when he was having the most effective language.
He was in language for learning, I think around the episode 50 or 80.
I stopped that and we went back to more mixed verbal behavior to just try to get some instructional
control over his language.
Eventually he did restart language for learning, even finished language for thinking.
I worked with him from sixth grade up until he was 21.
Um, and even when he was in his adult transitioning year, uh, where he was working and he was
at a Vo tech program, they we would actually still use the clicker to put Adam at jobs
that had low clicks because if he were working on an assembly line where he was really busy
and constant, um, his defective language would be almost 0.
But if he was more in a adult day program where, um, there was a lot of downtime, this
defective language would go through the roof.
So we actually had as adult placement on based on this clicker.
So in that way it was good.
But now I don't recommend using clickers to keep track of problem behavior.
And I can tell you a couple examples where clickers had been used and I used them this
way and made the mistake of, you know, there's 3 more kicks.
Oh, Johnny, just, uh, aggressed again, 2 more, you know, and all this clicking of problem
behavior, leaving little time to actually prevent the problem behavior and put the procedures
in place to get positive responding going.
The other big reason I changed to using it the way I use it now, which I'm going to tell
you in a second, is because I got trained in Tag Teach, which I did a video blog and
a podcast about Tag Teach.
So you can find out more about that then.
I also have been in schools and residential placements over the years where they have
a number of these clickers all balled in together and they're keeping track of there's 2 escapes
and there's 2 kicks and you know, all of this, uh, problem behavior data.
And again, leaving little to no time for, for really proactive, positive, a system of,
of data collection and of intervention.
So now what I recommend is we don't click problem behavior.
Instead, we use the partial interval, like I was showing with Adam where we would write
down every 15 minutes what the activity was, but then instead of the number of kicks or
the number of verbal stims or whatever, we would do major, minor problem behavior, uh,
we would have that keyed per student.
And then if it was a major problem behavior like aggression, which involved multiple kicks
and dropping to the ground and whatever topography, uh, the whatever the behavior looked like,
we would have that major problem behavior, it would be circled, then we would do ABC
data in addition.
And I think this is a much better way for behavior analysts to look at the whole picture
and to begin to program, uh, more efficiently.
For, for Adam, it worked to click the data and we got it down to very, very low rates.
But now then I'm Tag Teach trained that I believe in a very positive approach.
I believe in partial interval data collection with ABC data for those major problem behaviors.
Um, I use the clickers for pairing up good responses.
So if I say, touch your head, where's your nose?
You know, and I might use this as a more of a token system, I will use this to count words,
word approximations.
I have a shoe box program.
I think I did a video on that a while back.
Um, okay, so they said the word banana as they put it in.
So I'm going to be counting words counting positive.
I might be counting smiles, I might be counting, um, good things with my clicker and I leave
the problem behaviors for that partial interval form and the ABC data.
So hope you liked these tips on when and how to use a clicker, at least what I have found
to be effective over the years.
And if you'd like to learn more about my approach for toddlers through teens, you can check
out a free online workshop at marybarbera.com/workshop and I will see you right here next week.