06/29/10 - Dr. Buggey publishes article on VSM

An article on video self-modeling will appear in the journal "Young Exceptional Children."

Tom Buggey, Ph.D., and graduate assistant Grace Hoomes used self-modeling with Tommy, a VSM research participant, to teach signing, social behaviors and expanded verbalizations. In less than a year, Tommy progressed from needing prompting in using three signs to posing questions all on his own. Each time Tommy watched a new self-modeling video, drastic and positive changes were noted in his behavior. In his expressive language video, his mother prompted him to say words, which were then cut out using editing software and inserted back into the video in short sentences. Tommy’s mean length of utterance went from 1.2 to over 3 after only two viewings of the video. His only three-word sentence prior to this was "I did it!" Yes, he certainly did.