Today was another scheduled meeting that we had with our favorite ABA man, Jay. It was also a very special day because Jay brought his son AJ to play with Tony. As soon Jay and AJ got out of the car, Tony had spotted them from the bus (where we were playing at the time) and started shouting with excitement. Tony was pointing at AJ saying “baby.” Up to this point, we have not seen Tony pointing while manding or through tacting. It’s so wonderful to see these expressive behaviors taking shape! But back to the greeting….

We all headed inside to the playroom. It was really great to see Tony so excited about his playmate. While we talked about the different activities in Tony’s program, AJ and Tony played with different toys. With all the excitement going on Tony was screeching and showing AJ his turtle (also throwing things over his head). AJ had just gotten up from a nap and wasn’t quite as awake as Tony but still played very nicely, handing him toys and bouncing balls with him. After about 20 minutes Tony was overstimulated with all the new people in his room so he manded for “walk” and I took him outside. Shortly after, I asked Tony if he would like to go “night night” and Tony echoed “night night” so it was off for a nap.

While Tony was napping, we continued to talk about the program and how to effectively alter its structure. We discussed how Tony responds much better to novel stimuli. We’ve noticed he has seemed a little “burned out” on some of the motor imitation and Potato Head activities. Our data also supports this idea. Marlaina thought it would a better idea to alter phases in Tony’s program: Phase 1 and Phase 2. Each phase will have the same program design (motor imitation, mands, receptives etc) but will have different activities. In this way, we will have two altering program sets that will guard against Tony’s satiation with the activities.

During the meeting, we also began to calculate the percentages for each activity to see Tony’s progress thus far. We’re hitting around 50% success rate for most of the activities and some range up to 70%. We’d all like to see these percentages a little higher so we didn’t remove any single activity from the program. We did however add a few new things to the program in addition to Phase 2. Jay added some new mands for “What” “Where” “Who” Which.” We also added a new section for tacting prepositions such as “On/Off” “In/Out” “Over/Under” and “Above/Below.” Also added some new adjectives to tact “loud/quiet” and “hot/cold” to Phase 2. Motor imitation was another focus of discussion as we decided to start doing motor imitation with objects (ie throwing ball, kicking ball, making a basket with a ball).

That’s pretty much the summary for today’s meeting. Needless to say a lot of new material to get started on!