Projects
Current projects at The McCarton Center for Research (the Research Center) include research on various oral motor exercises, development of new tools to ensure high-quality group instruction, and methods of teaching that allow student to best maintain newly mastered skills. The Research Center has trained staff on hand to assist with all of these projects and conducts regular evaluations and follow-ups to ensure the efficacy of all implemented techniques.
On completion of each study, comprehensive summaries will be submitted to professional journals. The Research Center will also present its results at local, regional, and national conferences and training institutes.
Dyad and Group Data
Children with autism benefit from individualized instruction and low teacher-student ratios. However, it is also essential that students be able to learn in group settings. A child who lacks group learning skills can become dependent on one-to-one instruction, which may impede the child’s developmental progress.
The Research Center is evaluating a training tool that helps ensure high-quality group instruction. In particular, the Research Center is looking at methods by which teachers can provide a high rate of individual instruction and positive reinforcement to each child in a group, as well as more observational learning opportunities and peer interaction.
All Research Center staff members have been trained in these methods and will receive follow-up instruction and data-based feedback. This project will help the Research Center improve its already intensive and individualized group classes.
Oral Motor Exercises
Students with autism typically receive a variety of commonly applied interventions, some of which are better proved for effectiveness than others. Oral motor exercises, which are intended to build sound and speech production, are an approach that requires better evidence of efficacy.
This study will evaluate the extent to which such exercises build oral motor skills and sound production, as well as the short- and long-term effects of these exercises. A multiple baseline design, in which two behaviors of a single subject are studied and a treatment is applied to one of them, will be used to examine the impact of such exercises across various target behaviors and skills. The targets chosen will be determined as appropriate for the student by the child’s speech therapist. A protocol will be applied, and data will be collected in training sessions and in weekly revues.
Due to their wide application in the treatment of autism, knowledge of the usefulness or lack thereof of oral motor exercises is of signal importance to the autism care community. The Research Center’s study will influence treatment protocols among professionals.
Maintenance Assessment
Children with autism have difficulty acquiring skills and require specialized methods of instruction. Even when skills are mastered, learners have difficulty maintaining them. This is one of the greatest challenges in autism treatment.
Applied Behavioral Analysis, which is the basis of Dr. McCarton’s integrated instructional methods, applies “precision teaching,” which involves building the accuracy and quickness – together, the “fluency” -- with which the student responds. A fluent response is effortless and available to the student when needed. Fluency is built through “rate-building,” or timed practice, in which learners practice responding as quickly as they can.
The Research Center is especially interested in ascertaining whether it is the rapidity of learning or learning through repetition that improves retention. The Research Center is in the first phase of this project, collecting data on the maintenance of skills mastered by students at The McCarton School and initiating a rigorous comparative study on the difference in retention of skills taught with and without timed practice.