JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS 2015, 48, 194–198 NUMBER 1 (SPRING)

DO MIRRORS FACILITATE ACQUISITION OF MOTOR IMITATION IN

CHILDREN DIAGNOSED WITH AUTISM?
SCOTT A. MILLER, NICOLE M. RODRIGUEZ, AND AMI J. ROURKE
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA MEDICAL CENTER’S MUNROE-MEYER INSTITUTE

We evaluated the efficacy of a procedure that incorporated a mirror to teach gross motor imitation
with a 2-year-old boy who had been diagnosed with autistic disorder. Responses taught with a
mirror were acquired more quickly than responses taught without the mirror and were maintained
after the mirror was removed. These data indicate that a mirror can facilitate acquisition of motor
imitation.
Key words: autism, mirror, motor imitation, skill acquisition

The ability to imitate may serve as a behavioral
cusp that leads to the learning of new repertoires
(Rosales-Ruiz & Baer, 1997). For example,
imitation may facilitate the development of
social skills and language in children. Unfortu-
nately, some children with autism do not acquire
imitative skills without direct instruction (Rog-
ers & Pennington, 1991). In such cases, the use
of a mirror may promote imitation by providing
visual feedback regarding the correspondence
between the observed sample stimulus and the
position of one’s own body (Catania, 1998,
Chapter 13; Du & Greer, 2014), particularly
when the correspondence between the modeled
and imitative response cannot be easily observed
(e.g., facial expressions and hand gestures that are
not within the learner’s normal range of vision).
Recently, researchers have begun to evaluate
the effects of mirrors on imitative responding
(i.e., Du & Greer, 2014). Du and Greer (2014)
studied the effects of mirrors on imitative
responses and generalized imitation relative to
face-to-face (no-mirror) procedures in a be-
tween-groups comparison with six children
(three per group) who had been diagnosed
with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Children
in the mirror condition correctly imitated and
demonstrated more novel topographies than
children in the no-mirror condition. Although
the experimental design did not allow a direct
comparison of the effects of mirror and no-
mirror methods, Du and Greer provided
preliminary evidence of the potential benefits
of incorporating mirrors to teach imitative
responding to children with ASD.
Imitative responses necessarily require the
learner to orient toward the model rather than
the topographical correspondence of their
behavior with respect to the model. A mirror
may be useful in that it allows this type of
additional visual feedback, which may facilitate
establishing the necessary discriminative control
of the model. To date, only one study (Du &
Greer, 2014) has evaluated the benefits of
including a mirror on the acquisition of imitative
behavior for children with ASD. The purpose of
the current study was to evaluate the efficiency of
teaching imitative responses using a mirror
compared to responses trained in the absence
of the mirror.

We thank Kevin C. Luczynski for his suggestions for data METHOD

display.
Address correspondence to Nicole M. Rodriguez,
Munroe-Meyer Institute, University of Nebraska Medical
Center, 985450 Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha,
Nebraska 68198 (e-mail: nicole.rodriguez@unmc.edu).
doi: 10.1002/jaba.187
Participants, Setting, and Materials
Bryce, a 2-year-old boy who had been
diagnosed with ASD, had attended a univer-
sity-based early intervention program for

194
 MIRRORS AND MOTOR IMITATION
2 months before his participation in the study.
Bryce was selected for participation because he
did not engage in motor imitation despite
multiple attempts to target this skill. All trials
were conducted in a cubicle (2.4 m by 1.8 m)
that contained a table, two chairs, reinforcers
(e.g., edible items and toys), pen and data sheets,
and a free-standing mirror (0.75 m by 1 m)
positioned on the floor. The mirror was present
only during sessions in which it was used for
teaching.
Design and Procedure
Mirror-present and mirror-absent conditions
were compared using an adapted alternating
treatments design (Sindelar, Rosenberg, & Wil-
son, 1985) embedded within a concurrent
multiple baseline across sets of responses. Four
pairs of responses were assigned to either the
mirror-present condition or mirror-absent con-
dition and were evaluated across two sets. For Set
1, pairs were randomly assigned to the mirror-
present and mirror-absent conditions. For Set 2,
the pair associated with the highest level of
responding during baseline was assigned to the
mirror-absent condition to allow a more compel-
ling demonstration of the effects of the mirror.
Pair 1 included hands on cheeks and arms out
to the side; Pair 2 included touch eye and raise
arm; Pair 3 included touch nose and touch
stomach; and Pair 4 included touch ear and
touch shoulder. Target responses in each pair
were quasirandomly distributed across a 10-trial
session so that no target response was presented
consecutively for more than two trials. To
control for the visual feedback provided by the
mirror, we selected response topographies that
were not within the participant’s normal range of
vision (e.g., touch ear). Across all conditions,
reinforcers were selected from a one-trial multi-
ple-stimulus-without-replacement preference as-
sessment (similar to DeLeon & Iwata, 1996) that
was conducted before each session.
Baseline (differential reinforcement). The mir-
ror was not present during baseline for either
195
condition. Bryce and the therapist sat in chairs
facing each other. The therapist obtained eye
contact and said “do this” while modeling the
response. Prompts were not provided, and
incorrect responses received no programmed
consequence. Praise and edible reinforcement
were delivered contingent on correct imitation.
Interventions: Mirror present versus mirror
absent. We used progressive prompt-delay (Char-
lop, Schreibman, & Thibodeau, 1985) and
prompt-fading procedures during both mirror-
present and mirror-absent conditions to transfer
stimulus control from prompts to the discrim-
inative stimuli (i.e., modeled response). For
sessions with the mirror present, Bryce sat on the
floor facing the mirror with the therapist
positioned behind and to the right of him. The
therapist obtained eye contact in the mirror before
delivering the instruction. During the mirror-
absent condition, the therapist and Bryce were
seated in chairs facing each other, and the therapist
obtained eye contact before delivering the in-
struction. The mirror was added to Pair 2 after 28
sessions without an increase in correct responding.
The prompting steps included (a) 0 s to full
physical; (b) 2 s to full physical; (c) 0 s to partial
physical, then 2 s to full physical if Bryce did not
correctly complete the response; and (d) 2 s to
full physical. A second therapist, positioned
behind Bryce, provided all full and partial
physical prompts during both conditions. The
mirror was introduced at the 0 s to full physical
prompt step for responses assigned to the mirror
condition. We then introduced a 2-s delay to the
full physical prompt to assess transfer of stimulus
control after exposure to the 0-s prompting
sessions. Because an increase in correct respond-
ing was not observed and errors consisted of
incorrect responses rather than no responses, we
introduced a 0 s to partial physical/2 s to full
physical prompt as an intermediate step for
transferring stimulus control from the physical
prompt to the model while the potential for
errors was reduced (Wolery & Gast, 1984).
During the partial physical prompt, the therapist
196 SCOTT A. MILLER et al.
placed two fingers under Bryce’s forearm and
immediately guided the response halfway to
completion (partial physical prompts were
operationally defined per response to ensure
consistency of implementation across sessions).
The delay was increased to a 2-s delay to a full
physical prompt after two consecutive sessions in
which Bryce correctly completed the response on
at least 90% of trials. As in baseline, praise and
edible reinforcers were delivered contingent on
correct responding across all sessions during both
mirror-present and mirror-absent conditions.
Mastery was defined as three consecutive
sessions at or above 90% independent correct
responding. Three to 5 days after responses
taught with feedback from the mirror reached
mastery, we conducted a probe session to
evaluate whether correct responding would
persist without feedback from the mirror.
Response measurement, interobserver agreement,
and procedural integrity. Observers collected
data on Bryce’s correct, incorrect, and mirror-
orienting behavior. Correct responses were defined
as imitating the model of the primary therapist
within the specified prompt delay. Incorrect
responses were defined as any motor movement
other than the target behavior during the prompt
delay. Mirror orienting was defined as Bryce
making eye contact with the therapist through
the mirror’s reflection. During the partial
prompting procedure, a correct response was
scored if Bryce independently completed the
response after partial guidance. Data were
converted to a percentage of trials with correct
imitation for the purpose of data analysis. A
second observer collected data during 42% of
sessions. Interobserver agreement was calculated
by dividing the number of agreements by the
number of trials in a session (10) and converting
the result to a percentage. An agreement was
scored when each data collector recorded the
same response during a trial. Mean agreement
was 99% (range, 90% to 100%). The same
observer simultaneously collected procedural
integrity data on correct delivery of the
instruction, orientation of Bryce toward the
therapist or therapist’s reflection in the mirror,
and implementation of prompting and rein-
forcement contingencies. Each of these proce-
dures needed to be implemented correctly for a
trial to be recorded as correct. Integrity was
assessed for 33% of all sessions and ranged from
93% to 100%, with a mean of 99.6%.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Figure 1 shows the results of our evaluation.
Correct responding was low during baseline
across all sets, suggesting that differential re-
inforcement alone was insufficient to promote
acquisition of the imitative response. Overall,
when the intervention phase was introduced,
correct responding increased more rapidly for
pairs of responses in the mirror-present condition
(28 sessions to mastery for Pairs 1 and 3) than in
the mirror-absent condition (57 and 54 sessions
to mastery for Pairs 2 and 4, respectively). Correct
responding for Pair 2 remained low throughout
the mirror-absent condition. After we introduced
the mirror with Pair 2, responding reached
mastery and remained high when the mirror
was removed. The relative efficiency of teaching
with feedback from the mirror was replicated for
Set 2. Specifically, although mastery was even-
tually achieved in the mirror-absent condition
(Pair 4), almost twice as many sessions were
required than during the mirror-present con-
dition (Pair 3). Thus, the current results provide
evidence, in addition to previous work (e.g., Du
& Greer, 2014), of the positive effects of mirrors
on imitative responding in children with ASD.
One limitation of this study is that, in contrast
to patterns of responding for Pair 2, mastery
levels were eventually observed for no-mirror
responses in Pair 4. One plausible explanation is
that generalized imitation (Du & Greer, 2014;
Stokes & Baer, 1977) might have emerged as a
result of multiple imitative responses having
already been acquired in the mirror-present
conditions (i.e., multiple-exemplar training). In
 MIRRORS AND MOTOR IMITATION 197

Figure 1. Percentage correct imitation across Pair 1 (top panel), Pair 2 (second panel), Pair 3 (third panel), and Pair 4
(bottom panel) during baseline and intervention (mirror present vs. mirror absent).

this way, our results were consistent with those of
Du and Greer (2014). It should be noted,
however, that caution should be used with regard
to conclusions that pertain to possible relations
between the use of the mirror and generalized
imitation given that (a) the effects were delayed
and (b) we did not isolate this potential effect
within the context of the experimental design.
Differences in difficulty between mirror and no-
mirror responses, as might be suggested from the
relatively higher levels of accurate responding
during baseline, could have also contributed to
the acquisition of Pair 4 without the mirror. As
previously noted, the pair in Set 2 with the
highest accuracy was assigned to the no-mirror
condition to allow a more compelling demon-
stration of the effects of feedback from the
mirror. It is also worth noting that, like Pair 4,
Pair 2 may have eventually been acquired with
additional exposure to the teaching procedures in
the absence of the mirror. Nevertheless, our
results suggest that feedback from a mirror may
be a more efficient means of teaching imitation,
particularly for individuals in the early stages of
developing a motor imitation repertoire.
As previously noted, we selected responses that
did not easily allow visual feedback without a
mirror to control for the presence of visual
feedback. Differential rates of acquisition under
these conditions provide empirical support for
Catania’s (1998) notion that a mirror may be
beneficial in that it provides feedback between
the modeled and imitative responses. However, it
is unclear whether the mirror would have
198 SCOTT A. MILLER et al.
provided any additional advantage had all of the
target responses been within the child’s normal
range of vision (e.g., hand or arm gestures that
extended in front of the child). It is also
unknown whether initially targeting movements
that are within a child’s normal range of vision
(e.g., clapping hands) would facilitate general-
ization of imitation across movements outside
this range. Thus, future research should evaluate
the effects of using mirrors to target movement
within the normal range of vision.
Future research should assess the generality of
these findings by replicating this procedure
across individuals with similar prerequisite skills
and skill deficits. Future research might also
evaluate the effects of differences in the position
of the therapist in relation to the child (e.g., the
therapist models responses in front of or next to
the child during mirror or no-mirror condi-
tions). The use of a mirror might also be useful in
correcting inaccurate imitative responses such as
when a child waves his or her hand with the palm
facing him- or herself (e.g., during greetings).
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Received February 19, 2014
Final acceptance August 24, 2014
Action Editor, Terry Falcomata