| A number of theories suggest that communicative forms must be well matched to the environment in which they are presented in order to be effective. When a child's request form is poorly matched to the environment, the child experiences long delays, receives numerous unwanted items, and may display behavior problems. If the child's communicative development is delayed (as in the case of a developmental disability), the result may be the frequent occurrence of problem behaviors. These propositions were tested by examining the effect of two communicative contexts (toys on an open shelf, and toys in a closed cabinet) on (a) the communicative efficiency (measured by delay, adult errors, requests for clarification, and number of repetitions of the child's request) of two types of request (pointing and speech) and on (b) the occurrence of behavior problems. Three children using speech requests, three children using pointing requests, and thirty adult subjects participated. All children had a history of behavior problems. The results indicated that both speech and pointing were efficient responses in the open shelf condition (i.e., they resulted in high accuracy and minimal delays in producing adult mediated reinforcement). In contrast, speech but not pointing, produced accurate adult responses with minimal reinforcer delay in the closed cabinets condition. Relative to speech, pointing resulted in more requests for clarification, decreased accuracy and lengthy delay in the closed cabinets condition. Behavior problems occurred much more frequently in the closed cabinets condition with the children using pointing than with children using speech. These results support and have implications for behavioral theories of communicative development, the communication hypothesis of behavior problems, the reciprocal nature of influence processes between children and adults, and prevention and treatment of behavior problems. |
