• International Development Grant
• Senior Student Presenter Grant
• Innovative Student Research Grant
• Innovative Student Research Grant in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Sidney W. & Janet R. Bijou Grant
• Public Awareness Grant
• Microcredentials Grant

Teacher's College, Columbia University

Project Title: Assessing and Guiding Visual Attending by Early Learners During Picture Book Reading

Lilian (Lily) Morales is a doctoral student studying applied behavior analysis at Teachers College, Columbia University, under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Fienup. She received her MA in applied behavior analysis and special education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and her BA in psychology from the University of Miami. Lily is interested in the establishment of verbal behavior cusps that allow children to contact novel reinforcers, such as, generalized imitation and mands (Greer & Ross, 2008). Specifically, she is interested in interventions that allow us to hear a child’s first vocal responses, and in how correspondence between a model and a learner’s behavior comes to function as a reinforcer. The Bijou grant will support her study of a rapid motor imitation procedure designed to induce echoic behavior and generalized imitation in preschool children who have limited motor imitation and no prior vocal verbal behavior.

Emission of early vocal verbal behavior has been associated to faster word acquisition (LeGrand et al., 2021), improved word learning and retention (Joseph et al., 2019), and reduced aberrant behavior (Girard et al., 2016). However, the complex nature of establishing echoics and mands under the appropriate motivating conditions limits the number of interventions that target this behavior, and their widespread use among practitioners. Assessing interventions that can establish echoics as a cusp that allows students to learn independent mands and tacts, would eliminate the barrier for practitioners working with minimally verbal learners, and provide a path from imitation to functional speech. Additionally, more studies are needed on how correspondence between a model and the learner’s behavior is established as a conditioned reinforcer.

Lily’s current project will investigate whether a rapid motor imitation antecedent intervention (RMIA) produces first instances of vocal verbal behavior (echoics and mands) and generalized imitation as verbal behavior cusps in preschool children with limited motor imitation and no previously observed vocal verbal behavior. The study will be conducted with preschool-aged children in a classroom that uses the Comprehensive Application of Behavior Analysis to Schooling (CABAS®). If the goals are achieved, the procedure will provide practitioners with an efficient, replicable method for establishing initial vocal behavior in learners for whom traditional echoic-to-mand training has been unsuccessful and will help assess the behavioral processes by which imitation emerges as a reinforcer in early childhood. 

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