The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

Teaching with Acoustical Guidance (TAG) is an inexpensive positive approach to teaching specific skills and individual behaviors to learners. The TAGteach approach can be used in school, home, and community environments. Components for implementation, demonstrations and simulations of the method, and feedback on outcomes from special education personnel using the method will be discussed. Participants will engage in an interactive hands-on simulation of TAGteach. Introduction

Teaching students with autism requires that educators and parents provide the students with a structured environment that gives information and reinforcement for appropriate behaviors while addressing each student’s individual characteristics. Coordination of efforts among the service providers and parents is crucial to the process of teaching and communicating with the student with autism. In an effort to be proactive and constructive, educators and parents seek new tools to use that are simple to implement, inexpensive, practical and applicable to any ability level across disciplines/environments, that result in quick, observable positive gains.

TAGteach™ (Teaching with Acoustical Guidance): Background and Description

Teaching with Acoustical Guidance (TAGteach) is a method of teaching skills to students by indentifying correct behavior and making it stronger, while ignoring mistakes (allowing them to extinguish). The procedure for using TAGteach requires the teacher or parent to (1) define the components of the behavior, (2) identify a specific behavioral component for the student to perform (the “tag” point), (3) mark that behavioral component with an auditory “tag” made by a handheld clicker, and (4) provide reinforcement to the student. Key aspects of TAGteach include its ease of implementation, simplicity, and clarity. The teacher has the ability to provide immediate and clear feedback to the student while the student has the opportunity to get reinforcement for an attainable behavior or learning goal.

TAGteach: Implementation in the Public School Setting

TAGteach has simple and practical application to educating students with autism. It uses objective, observable and measurable criterion for the teacher as well as the student. The technique itself is one that has many applications for teaching social skills, academic skills, and specific types of behavior.
To consider implications for district-wide use for students with autism, selected teachers were invited to participate during initial stages of TAGteach training. A group of twenty participated in a hands-on workshop training session from TAGteach International. Among the participants were educators, dog trainers, parents and a higher education faculty member of pre-service teachers in special education. The training included a research foundation for the method, practical experience in defining behaviors and tag points, and hands-on implementation of the process. After the training, the participants began using the method in their classrooms, at home and within the community. Some types of target behavior wherein TAGteach was used to reduce or replace included: teaching a student to walk with flat feet (replacing toe-walking), teaching a student to clean lunch tables quietly (replacing verbal complaints from the student), teaching students to perform behaviors after a single direction from the teacher (reducing latency), and teaching pre-service teachers ‘how to teach’ students with autism (reducing error).

Post-training, participants continued to use TAGteach within their respective environments. To aid with implementation within the classroom, additional resources were purchased and provided by the district’s special education association, along with follow-up support and communication. Additional materials included: handheld taggers, materials for making “tag”ulators (a counter for ‘tags’ that will be exchanged for reinforcers), on-going communication among the teachers, and continued support and feedback from supervisors. The teachers maintained regular contact through the use of e-mail and after-school meetings. Further communication was established through the development of a webpage wherein the participants have the ability to share documents, photographs, videotapes, and experiences.

TAGteach: Implications for Teachers and Parents

TAGteach has a wide range of applications for learners, teachers, parents, as well as siblings of individuals with autism. Teacher proposals for its use show its versatility: on-task behavior, eye contact, walking on stairs, following teacher directions, cleaning up work areas, learning phonetic pronunciation of words, physical education activities, etc. During brainstorming sessions, other applications have been identified: completing a series of tasks like getting ready for school, ordering in a restaurant, or dressing oneself; completing chores at home; saying individual sounds as parts of words; performing physical skills like tossing a ball.

Implementation of the method in other settings would require basic training of the instructors (teachers, therapists, or parents) and the purchase of taggers and materials to make ‘tagulators’. Communication with others who use the method will provide support, suggestions, and assist with problem-solving.  Interaction can be achieved through face-to-face meetings, on-line activities such as direct e-mail, web design, and/or e-mail lists, and phone calls. 
Using TAGteach offers an opportunity to change the interaction between teacher and learner in a positive way by focusing on success and offering positive reinforcement. TAGteach is an inexpensive, simple and practical method for reducing, increasing or replacing a variety of behavior across settings and disciplines. It allows for immediate feedback, which results in quick, positive observable gains.

TAGteach: A Proposed Pilot Case Study

To further TAGteach International’s reports of positive gains in using TAGteach (Orr, 2007) a follow-up proposed pilot case study is planned for 2008-2009. During the case study, TAGteach will be implemented during Discrete Trial Training (Wallin, 2007) to help teach a student with autism how to initiate a conversation with a peer. This difficulty is typical of individuals with autism, which results in social deficits through adulthood (Cesaroni & Garber, 1991). It has been reported that children with autism can learn strategies that effectively guide information processes and promote social interactions (Bock, 2007). Because of the simplicity, flexibility, and ease of the use of TAGteach, the proposed pilot case study will help determine whether TAGteach can be used to improve the ability of adolescents with autism to appropriately initiate a conversation with a peer.

Participant, Settings and Design

The participant is a secondary adolescent who has been identified with autism. Throughout the day, the student has contact with peers (classroom, hallway, lunch), but has difficulty initiating conversation. A multiple-baseline-across-settings design (Tawney & Garst, 1984) will be used to collect behavioral data centering on the number of opportunities in each environment upon which the student could initiate a conversation. Social scripts (Stokes, 2007) will be used to help guide the student during peer conversation and will be included as part of the baseline phase. Intervention will include ‘tagging’ the student when the opportunity presents itself for the student to initiate a conversation (walking past a peer in the hallway, sitting next to a peer at lunch, etc.). The dependent measure will be whether the student initiates the conversation on his own without the use of the ‘tag’ post training.

According to Bock (2007) students with autism have the ability to learn strategies and how to use them appropriately during social interactions that require social communication and social problem-solving. By combining social scripts with TAGteach, we anticipate an increase in the student’s ability to initiate a conversation without adult prompting and be more successful in following through with reciprocal social communication.

Preliminary procedures for the pilot, along with audience suggestions will be discussed during the presentation.

Learning Objectives: