What is it about?
Parents and classroom teachers teamed up and helped treat 3 young children with selective mutism (SM) within a 8-week period. Prior to the treatment, these three 8-year-olds suffered from an anxiety condition called SM and were reluctant to speak within the school setting despite speaking freely at home. Under the guidance of the lead researcher, the parents and teachers implemented simple activities that involved positive reinforcements, video self-modeling, and fading strategies, and successfully helped these children regain their voice within school settings.
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Why is it important?
Because most children with selective mutism predominately failed to speak to their classroom teachers and peers, the conventional behavioral therapy where children were treated by the clinician outside of the school does not make much sense (i.e., clinicians are not the target conversational partners and there is no guarantee that the child will transfer the speech if s/he eventually speaks to the clinician). Our finding demonstrates the importance of treating the symptoms at its source (i.e., within school settings, and with the targeted conversational partners). Not only did this method save time and resources, the child participants learned to speak in a natural setting, which enabled them to widen their speech circles with each session (speaking to more teachers and peers). The parents also learned the skills to help their child transfer their verbal behavior outside of school (at home with relatives) and within community settings. Note that the total treatment time for each child was less than 2.5 hours!
Perspectives
From Poling Bork, PhD: Since all of my three children suffered from selective mutism (SM), I understand the urgency and struggles of finding a cure. For instance, my son was treated for 5 years with numerous methodologies by numerous clinicians but was still unable to speak to his best friends. Hence, I have "taken the matter into my own hands" and conducted extensive literature reviews as well as research on SM during my masters and doctoral tenures. I had the goal of trying the video self-modeling method one day as I believe it would work (the only method my son did not receive due to the technological limitations in early 2000). I also wanted to involve parents and teachers in the process and to treat the mute behavior inside the school where children with SM predominately struggled to speak. To my delight, not only did the video self-modeling combined with the reinforcement and fading methods work very well, the speed of change was encouraging because each child received less than 2.5 hours of treatment. I hope this paper encourages more researchers and clinicians to explore the treatment methodology that we used, and to help expand the knowledge base in the rapid resolution of this anxiety condition!
Poling Bork
Brock University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Video self-modeling, fading, and reinforcement: An effective treatment package for children with selective mutism, Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, June 2019, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1359104519855110.
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