When students have mastered the self-monitoring procedures they are ready to apply them to a task. During this stage the teacher should remind the students to use the procedures and then monitor the students to be sure the procedures are being used correctly and consistently. If students are not using the procedures correctly and/or consistently, booster sessions may be required or it may be necessary to modify procedures. The teacher should also take data on the target behavior to evaluate the effectiveness of self-monitoring. In practice, when self-monitoring is effective there is an immediate and pronounced therapeutic change in the target behavior.
Self-Evaluation
Self-evaluation (also termed self-management) is closely related to self-monitoring and is also well supported by research (Reid et al. 2005). Self-evaluation closely resembles self-monitoring in that it requires students to evaluate their behavior at set intervals (Shapiro and Cole 1994), and in practice self-monitoring is often incorporated in self-evaluation. It differs from self-monitoring in that self-evaluation involves the use of external comparisons, and reinforcers are explicitly incorporated. The first steps in self-evaluation are to identify the target behavior and take baseline data (Shapiro et al. 1998; Wilkinson 2008). The same directives for well-defined, appropriate behaviors noted previously apply here. Next, the teacher should meet with the students to: (a) explain the purpose of the intervention (i.e., it will help them manage their behavior), (b) set performance goals, and (c) establish reinforcers that the students will receive for attaining goals. The teacher then instructs the students in the procedures.
Self-evaluation procedures have included rating behavior on a scale of 1 (did not follow directions or finish work) to 5 (followed all directions and finished all work) for a period, and simpler ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ ratings. Regardless of the scale, students are taught to self-record their ratings using a rating sheet when they are cued at pre-determined intervals. Students’ ratings are then compared to the evaluation of an external observer such as a teacher, paraprofessional or to a pre-determined goal such as getting 20 math problems correct. The teacher and students meet regularly and discuss performance. This meeting might be daily, or directly following the period in which the students self-evaluated. Students are then awarded points or tokens (which can be redeemed for reinforcers) or reinforcement based on how closely the students rating matched the external evaluation or goal. In the final step, after students are able to consistently and accurately rate their performance and their behavior has improved, the external matching is faded with students self-awarding points or tokens based on their own self-evaluation.
Self-Instruction
Self-instruction strategies involve the use of induced self-statements to enable students to self-regulate behavior (Reid and Lienemann 2006). Quite simply, children are taught how to “talk themselves through” a task or activity. Self-instruction techniques developed from Vygotsky’s (1934/1962) discovery that children used overt verbalizations to help control behavior. This self-talk (often termed “private speech”) helps children to self-regulate and guide behavior and is a part of the normal developmental process (Harris 1990). Self-instruction techniques imitate the way that language is used to self-regulate behavior. Self-instructions can serve many functions: (1) problem definition—defining the nature and demands of a task; (2) focusing attention and planning—attending to task and generating plans; (3) strategy related—engaging and using a strategy; (4) self-evaluation—error detection and correction; (5) coping—dealing with difficulties or failures; and (6) self-reinforcement—rewarding oneself (Graham et al. 1992).
Teaching students to use self-instruction involves a four-step process (Graham et al. 1992). First, the teacher and students meet and discuss the importance of verbalizations. The teacher stresses that what we say to ourselves can affect our behavior. For example, if we tell ourselves that we will make a mistake, we probably will. Next, the teacher and students jointly develop meaningful, individualized task-appropriate self-statements. This often involves the teacher providing models of self-statements and helping students to develop their own. The best self-statements are ones that are personally meaningful to the students. Third, the teacher and students discuss when and where the self-statements would be useful and practice the use of self-statements. The final step is providing collaborative practice in the use of self-instruction to perform the task. The ultimate goal is for students to progress from the use of modeled, overt self-statements to covert, internalized speech (Harris 1990). Self-instructions are commonly used as a component in strategy instruction interventions (e.g., Graham and Harris 1996).
Goal-Setting
Goal-setting is viewed as a vital aspect of self-regulation (Bandura 1986). Goals serve to structure effort, provide information on progress, and to motivate performance (Schunk 1990). Students who can see their progress toward a goal are more likely to sustain effort (Bandura 1986). Goals may be either absolute (i.e., with a fixed standard such as completing 10 math problems correctly in 2 min) or normative (i.e., doing as well as another student on the math problems). Effective goals have three critical features: specificity, proximity, and difficulty (Bandura 1988). Specificity refers to how well a goal is defined. Goals which are ill defined, such as try your hardest on the test, are not as effective as those which are well specified (e.g., get 80 % correct on the test). Proximity refers to temporal aspects of goals. Proximal goals can be completed relatively quickly (e.g., get 80 % correct on Friday’s spelling test), and are generally more effective than distal goals, which can only be completed in the far future (e.g., learn 100 new spelling words by the end of the semester). However, it is possible to use a series of proximal goals to accomplish a distal goal.
Difficulty refers to the degree of challenge a goal poses. Goals that are easily attained usually will not help to enhance or maintain effort (Johnson and Graham 1990). The most effective goals are moderately challenging; they are neither too easy nor too difficult. Note that it is critical for goals to be valued and accepted by the students. If a goal has little or no importance it is unlikely to improve performance or maintain motivation or effort. Attributions (the perceived cause of an outcome) must also be considered (Schunk 2001). Students should see progress toward a goal as being the primary result of their efforts rather than external factors (e.g., luck or outside help). In practice, goal setting is typically used in conjunction with other self-regulation strategies. For example, in self-evaluation strategies, the criterion serves as a goal, and self-monitoring serves to provide students with feedback on progress toward the goal.
Self-Reinforcement
Self-reinforcement occurs when a student selects a reinforcer, and then self-awards it after a predetermined criterion is met (e.g., when I finish reading the chapter I get a piece of pie) (Graham et al. 1992). This process resembles the natural process where a child learns that meeting expectations often results in positive reinforcement, while failing to meet them usually results in no response or a negative response (Zimmerman and Schunk 1989). The process teaches children to self-reinforce (or self-punish) their own behavior. In practice, self-reinforcement is typically used as in combination with other strategies. For example, the final step in self-evaluation involves students awarding themselves reinforcement. The initial steps in implementing self-reinforcement (Reid and Lienemann 2006) involve the teacher and students meeting to determine standards for reinforcement and to select reinforcers. Next the teacher teaches the students how to evaluate performance to determine if the criterion for reinforcement has been met. In the last step, the student performs the task, evaluates performance and self-awards reinforcement when the criterion is reached. The notion that individuals can actually engage in self-reinforcement may be seen by some as counter to a strict operant perspective of self-regulation (see Mace et al. 2001, for a detailed critique); regardless, the technique itself is quite effective.
Self-regulation Interventions for Social Skills
Several studies have used self-regulation interventions to teach social skills to children with ASD. Researchers have examined self-regulation in combination with external reinforcement, peer training, and video modeling.
Self-monitoring and reinforcement
Self-monitoring plus reinforcement is the most commonly used self-regulation strategy for social skills instructions. Koegel and Koegel (1990) created procedures to teach self-monitoring skills to children with ASD and severe disabilities. They began by identifying functional reinforcers for each child, and by teaching children to discriminate between appropriate and inappropriate behaviors by modeling examples and non-examples, and by scoring, or not scoring a correct response, respectively. Researchers then taught each child how to use a self-monitoring wrist counter. Teaching consisted of providing an example of the desired response (appropriate to the skill being taught), prompts for recording responses on the wrist counter, and immediate reinforcement for a correct response. Children received reinforcement for not self-recording an inappropriate response. Prompts were faded over time, and the length of time between reinforcement increased, until the child was independently able to record instances of appropriate responses.
During the training phase, children were taught to solicit their own reinforcers (self-reinforcement). Children had to first identify when the wrist counter reached the number needed for reinforcment. Researchers reminded the children how many points they needed for a reinforcer and then prompted children to look at their counters. Systematic fading of prompts (i.e. asking the child, “What happens when you earn all of your points?” and non-verbal gestures such as glancing at the wrist counter) occurred until the child was able to self-reinforce with no prompts from the researcher.
Several researchers have used these procedures to teach self-monitoring to children with ASD. Koegel et al. (1992) used procedures with four children (6–11 years old) considered by teachers to be unresponsive to verbal initiations. Self-monitoring increased the number of instances of appropriate responses across clinical, home, school, and community settings. Accuracy of self-recording was also assessed; all four children were able to accurately self-monitor with a range of 72–95 % accuracy. Koegel and Frea (1993) used self-monitoring to improve social communicative skills for two teenage male students with high-functioning ASD. Self-recording procedures varied slightly in that students were given a cued-preset-alarm stopwatch for self-assessing. When the alarm sounded, the students were taught to place a mark in the numbered boxes on a self-monitoring sheet if they exhibited the target behavior during the time interval. After instruction, students performed at or near 100 % for the target behaviors—eye gaze, facial expression, voice volume, and perseveration. Stahmer and Schreibman (1992) utilized the same procedures to teach three children (7–13 years old) appropriate play skills in unsupervised environments. All three children exhibited more than 80 % appropriate play at post-test. Additionally, improvements generalized to unsupervised settings with different toys.
In a series of studies Newman and colleagues investigated whether self-monitoring could improve students with ASD initiations and appropriate conversational responses. First, students were asked to take a token when they had exhibited an appropriate response. During self-monitoring, teachers reduced prompting, asking students if they had earned a token. Prompting was then faded entirely and the students began self-monitoring and reinforcing. In a first study (Newman et al. 1996), three teenage male students with ASD were taught to self-monitor appropriate verbal responses. Students exhibited more appropriate responses during the self-monitoring conditions than the baseline conditions. Interestingly, students tended to under reinforce (i.e., not reinforce themselves for a correct response) rather than over reinforce (reinforce themselves when it was not appropriate).
Similar procedures were used in two other studies that examined self-monitoring with students from preschool to 9 years old. Newman et al. (2000) taught two 6-year-olds and one preschool-aged student to vary verbal responding and to decrease perseverative play. Accuracy of self monitoring was variable for each student, with each student again under-reinforcing. Newman and Ten Eyck (2005) taught three 6–9 year old students with ASD and mild to moderate mental retardation to increase social initiations. After being taught to self-monitor, one student maintained approximately the same rate of response, while the other two participants exhibited a greater number of initiations. Initiations increased even when students were not accurately self-monitoring. Newman et al. (1997) taught three children with ASD (4, 6, and 12 years old) to self-monitor a differential reinforcement of other behaviors (DRO) program to reduce disruptive behaviors (e.g., nail flicking, out of seat). After the DRO program had reduced the disruptive behaviors to low levels, the students were taught to self-reinforce when cued by a timer if they had not engaged in the disruptive behavior during the previous interval. This procedure was effective at maintaining the gains of the DRO program.
Self-monitoring and self-reinforcement was used to help a 12-year-old girl with ASD and moderate mental retardation to reduce inappropriate behaviors (Mancina et al. 2000). After the student was taught to discriminate between quiet and noisy (i.e. inappropriate verbalizations) the student was taught to mark quiet boxes on a self-recording sheet when cued at 5 s intervals via a beep from a timer. For each quiet box checked, the student self-awarded herself an edible reinforcer (e.g., a raisin). The student also self-reinforced (i.e., a sticker, tape player, soda) when she attained a predetermined performance criterion.
Self-regulation with peers
Researchers have also utilized a peer mediation component to improve social skills for children with ASD. Loftin et al. (2008) taught three 9–10-years old students with ASD to increase social initiations and decrease repetitive behaviors. Students were taught to socially initiate using three steps: (1) task analysis; (2) sequential teaching of task analyzed skills using modeling, repeated trials, prompts, and reinforcement; and (3) multiple exemplars to train for generalization. Peers were trained to naturally reinforce all initiations made by the students with ASD. All three students with ASD demonstrated an increase in social initiations from baseline to intervention and a decrease in repetitive behaviors. Behavior was maintained when the self-monitoring was removed; both parents and teachers agreed that the self-monitoring procedures were helpful.
Another study used peer mediation and self-monitoring to teach four students (10–13 years old) with ASD and Asperger s Syndrome (AS)-like symptoms to increase requesting, commenting, and sharing (Morrison et al. 2001). Each time a student exhibited the target skill and correctly recorded it by placing a check in a box on a self-monitoring sheet; they were provided with a reinforcer. The peer condition was similar, but in this case the peer checked off the boxes and delivered rewards when the target behavior was exhibited. All students increased instances of requesting, commenting, and sharing in both the self and peer monitoring conditions, and there was little difference between the two conditions. Two of the four students generalized their skills to two additional settings, one student generalized to one other setting, while one participant did not generalize findings to any other setting.
Self-monitoring and video modeling
Combining self-monitoring with video modeling is an emerging method for teaching children with ASD social and behavioral skills. Apple et al. (2005) used self-monitoring with video modeling with to teach two boys with AS (5 years 9 months old) and one girl (3 years five months old) diagnosed with ASD to give compliments. Students first were shown a video of the target skill, demonstrated by children. The students returned to their class and peers were directed to engage with the students, giving opportunities to provide compliments. The next instructional phase consisted of: (a) video modeling sessions, (b) the teacher telling the students that if they gave four compliments when they returned to class they would receive a preferred reinforcer (c) instruction in self-monitoring with either a wrist counter or a checklist. In the final phase, after viewing a video, students were told that when two compliments were made, they could obtain a reinforcer. After viewing videos on compliment giving and being taught self-monitoring, all three participants reached criteria of providing at least two compliments to peers.
Self-monitoring plus video modeling was used to teach social initiation to three boys with autism (5–7 years old) who were in the process of transferring from a self-contained to a general education class (Deitchman et al. 2010). After being videotaped prior to instruction, students were provided with video feedback. In this feedback session, students were shown a clip of their interaction. For an appropriate social interaction, the researcher said “good talking” and pointed to a green smiling face. When showing the student a clip of an inappropriate interaction, the researcher said, “not good talking,” and pointed to a red frowning face. After five examples were presented in this manner, the researcher then asked the student “Was that good talking or not good talking?” while pointing to the happy and sad faces. If the student responded correctly, he received a penny in his jar. If he did not respond correctly, he was physically redirected to point to the correct picture and the researcher provided specific feedback. All cases of inappropriate social response, whether correctly or incorrectly identified, were followed by a suggestion from the researcher of what the student could have said to make an appropriate response. After training, all three students increased their social initiations. Two students also generalized their initiations to other settings and maintained their initiations after the feedback sessions were discontinued.
Coyle and Cole (2004) used similar procedures with three students (9–11 years old), with ASD. All of these students were described as low functioning and all exhibited pronounced deficiencies in language and adaptive behaviors. Students were shown videos taken of them while they were attending to a task. The instructor also used communication picture cards to help draw attention to appropriate on-task behaviors. Students self-monitored whether or not they were on-task at 30 s intervals by marking a box under a picture of a child working or one not working. They then self-reinforced when they had marked themselves on task. All students’ time off-task immediately decreased markedly. For two students time off task was near zero. Self-monitoring also resulted in a decrease in the number of prompts needed to decrease hand flapping and inappropriate verbalizations.
Self-regulation for Learning Tasks
Maintaining focus on a task and completing tasks can be difficult for students with ASD. This in turn can lead to behaviors that are disruptive to the classroom environment (e.g., walking around the room, talking to other students) and academic problems. This is a serious concern because students with ASD typically spend a considerable portion of their time in the general education classroom. Self-regulation procedures have potential to help students with ASD maintain focus on tasks and complete tasks. They may also be useful in supporting academic skills development (Taft and Mason 2010; Whalon et al. 2009).
Self-monitoring for on-task behaviors
Callahan and Rademacher (1999) used a combination of self-monitoring, self-evaluation, and goal setting in the general education classroom to increase the time on-task of an 8 year old boy with ASD with average to above average intellectual ability. The student was taught to self-monitor attention, which was defined as (1) in seat, (2) working quietly, and (3) looking at teacher or materials. To self-monitor, the student was cued to self-assess using a taped tone presented at random intervals (from 15 s to 2 min 15 s). The student used a self-recording sheet and marked a smiley face if he was on task or a sad face if he was not. There were ten opportunities to self-monitor in each session, and the student completed three sessions each day. Prior to each session, the student would set a performance goal for the session (e.g., 7 out of 10 smiley faces) and a daily goal (e.g., 21 out of 30 smiley faces). During each session, an aide monitored the student’s behavior and completed an identical self-monitoring sheet. After each session, the two sheets were compared. If the number of smiley faces matched exactly, the student received 3 points (which could be redeemed for reinforcers) and received points for meeting or exceeding his daily goal.
Coyle and Cole (2004) used similar procedures with three students, aged 9–11, with ASD. All of these students were described as low functioning and all exhibited pronounced deficiencies in language and adaptive behaviors. The authors used video modeling to teach the self-monitoring procedures. Students were shown videos taken of them while they were attending to a task. The instructor also used communication picture cards to help draw attention to appropriate on-task behaviors. Students self-monitored whether or not they were on-task at 30 s intervals by marking a box under a picture of a child working or one not working. They then self-reinforced when they had marked themselves on task. All students’ time off-task immediately decreased markedly. For two students time off task was near zero. The authors also reported that the self-regulation strategy also resulted in a decrease in the number of prompts needed to decrease hand flapping and inappropriate verbalizations.
Students with ASD can also self-monitor their academic performance. Soares et al. (2009), worked with a 13-year-old male student with AS who had serious problems remaining on task without teacher prompting. As a result of this problem the student exhibited out-of-seat behavior and other behaviors disruptive to the classroom (e.g., tantrums, self-injurious behaviors). The student was taught to identify when his work was completed, and then to use a computer to cut-and-paste a Mickey Mouse figure onto a self-monitoring chart. The cut-and-paste served as self-recording. After self-monitoring began, the student more than doubled the number of activities he completed. There was also a therapeutic effect on the students disruptive behavior—the number of tantrums and self-injurious behaviors also decreased markedly during self-monitoring. This study illustrates another useful aspect of self-monitoring; there are often effects on behaviors other than the behavior that students actually self-monitor.
Self-regulation for task completion
Takeuchi and Yamamoto (2001) implemented SMA and SMP for reading homework performance across three subject areas: Japanese, social studies, and science with one sixth grade student with ASD. For SMA, a clock alarm, set at 5 min time intervals, prompted the student to self-record whether or not he was concentrating by marking yes or no on a self-recording sheet. In a combined SMA and SMP intervention, the student monitored attention in the timed-condition and recorded the percentage of correct answers to solved problems on a self-graphing sheet. Student performance was measured: (a) task completion time, (b) rest time requested by the student, (c) total session time (task + rest time), (d) academic accuracy, and (e) classroom test scores. Both task completion time and rest time decreased, resulting in a total session time reduction, as an outcome of the intervention. Accuracy also improved with SMA, however, science problem accuracy was only improved with the addition of SMP. Effects generalized to improved classroom test performance in Japanese, social studies, science, and one non-related subject, home economics. Takeuchi and Yamamoto (2001) noted the simplicity of the intervention for both home and school application. Holifield et al. (2010) reported results similar to Takeuchi and Yamamoto (2001) for self-monitoring of reading homework. Additionally they found that: (1) self-monitoring was, “relatively easy to implement and blended well into the typical school procedure” (Holifield et al. 2010, p. 236); (2) self-monitoring attention to task resulted in increased accuracy in performance across academic tasks; and (3) self-monitoring increased independence in completing both homework and class work.
In a another study, two students with ASD, in fifth-grade and third-grade, were provided self-monitoring instruction to improve attention in independent work in their self-contained language arts and mathematics class (Holifield et al. 2010). Students were provided a simple definition of attending to task. Key words such as “count” and “write” were used on a self-monitoring recording sheet. Students were prompted to circle “yes” or “no” in response to verbal cues provided at 5 min intervals over a 20 min period. Prior to instruction, both the students’ attention to task in language arts was recorded at a mean of 32 %; levels of accuracy varied with one student obtaining a mean of 72 % and the other 51 %. During self-monitoring, the students’ attention to task more than doubled; accuracy increased to means of 93 % and 95 % respectively for language arts and to 90 % and 97 % for mathematics.
Self-regulation for writing
Researchers have established, across four studies including eight students with ASD and AS, the effects of self-regulation in combination with strategy instruction in improving written expression performance (Delano 2007a; Delano 2007b; Asaro and Saddler 2009; Asaro-Saddler and Saddler 2010). In each study, Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) instruction was used (Harris et al. 2008). Four self-regulation procedures are imbedded throughout SRSD instruction: goal setting, self-monitoring, self-instruction, and self-reinforcement. Six instructional stages facilitated student mastery of strategy use: (a) develop preskills and background knowledge, (b) discuss the strategy, (c) model the strategy, (d) memorize the strategy, (e) guided practice, and (f) independent practice (see Table 13.1 for SRSD instruction). In SRSD, responsibility for strategy use and self-regulation of the writing process is gradually shifted from the teacher to the student by scaffolding instruction. Instruction is criterion-based rather than time-based; students demonstrate mastering a particular phase before moving on to the next phase.
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