Below is a general skill sequence for helping learners respond appropriately to greetings where someone asks them what they are doing.
As learners become proficient in labeling their own behavior and vocally responding appropriately to the greetings of others, it might be appropriate to focus on tailoring their responses to conventional questions encountered during greetings. Often, a peer or another individual might pose the question, "What's up?" in various forms. This skill area not only emphasizes the learner's ability to label their own behavior but also instructs them to reciprocate by inquiring about the greeter's day. Once proficiency in this area is achieved, the learner can then be guided to respond to the ubiquitous "How are you?" greeting.
Treatment Plan Goal Ideas
This is a list of treatment plan goals. These are different from the goals you will find in the skill sequence below. Your treatment plan goals encompass any number of goals from the skill sequence. Sometime they will include multiple goals from the sequence (”Learner will label 5 toys”) and sometimes the treatment plan goal will be simply consist of a really important goal from the skill sequence (”Will label caregiver”). An analogy I like to use goes as follows: Each skill sequence goal (commonly known as a “target”) represent each stair in a flight of stairs. The treatment plan goal is the flight itself.
Treatment plan goal ideas for this particular skill area are as follows:
- Learner will accurately label their own, current behavior when another individual asks them “What’s up?”.
- Learner will accurately label their own, current behavior and ask another individual the same question when that individual greets them with “What’s up?”.
- Learner will accurately label their own, current behavior and ask another individual the same question when that individual greets them with a “What…” question for five different “What…” questions.
Component Skills
Your learner may need to be fluent in these component skills first before introducing this goal/skill area. Component skills for this skill sequence may include skill areas that are fundamental to other areas. Fluency in the skill areas listed below may increase the likelihood that your learner will succeed in this skill sequence and those afterward.
Component Skills for Understanding Personal Actions
Intro to Scanning Intro to Matching (Visual Perception) Following GesturesMatches Common Items in 2D Array 1.0 (Identical)Receptively IDs Common Items in 2D ArrayLabels Common Items 1.0Labels Common Actions 1.0Labels Own BehaviorComponent Skills for Appropriate Social Response
Intro to Reinforcer/Preference ExpansionSingle Actions with Common ToysFollowing GesturesIntro to Eye ContactGreetings (Non-Verbal) Filling In Common SongsFilling In Common Phrases Greetings (Verbal)Skill Possibilities
Below is a possible skill sequence for working on increasing your learner’s ability respond to “what” greetings. Note that every learner is different and that you likely will need to tweak and vary some programming to their needs. Click the triangle icon to view the full description for each skill in the sequence/area.
Concurrent Skills
Working on these skills at the same time could help with goal mastery. Maybe your learner has mastered these skills already. Perhaps they are already listed as component skills above. That’s okay! Targeting other learning channels might help your learner.
Labels Own BehaviorGreetings (Verbal)Intro to Eye ContactLabels Favorite People, Places, & ThingsComposite Skills
These are the possible next steps for learners who have mastered, or are mastering, the skills listed above. Note that new skill areas may require fluency in other component skills not listed above. Also, you can introduce composite skill sequences prematurely to keep your learner progressing, as generativity may occur earlier than expected.
Responding to “How” Greetings (Coming Soon!)
Labels Personal Likes & DislikesFollow the link below to better understand component-composite analysis.
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