Effects of video modeling on social initiations by children with autism

We examined the effects of a video modeling intervention on social initiation and play behaviors with 3 children with autism using a multiple baseline across subjects design. Each child watched a videotape showing a typically developing peer, and the experimenter engaged in a simple social interactive play using one toy. For all children, social initiation and reciprocal play skills were enhanced, and these effects were maintained at 1- and 3-month follow-up periods.     

Reducing rapid eating in teenagers with autism: use of a pager prompt

This study assessed the effects of a vibrating pager for increasing the duration of meal consumption in 3 teenagers with autism who were observed to eat too quickly. Participants were taught to take a bite only when the pager vibrated at predetermined intervals. A reversal design indicated that the vibrating pager successfully increased the total duration of mealtime, thereby slowing the pace of consumption for all 3 participants.     

An interest‐based intervention package to increase peer social interaction in young children with autism spectrum disorder

The literature suggests that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) educated in inclusive settings generally do not interact with typically developing classmates during social activities. This study assessed whether an intervention package consisting of interest‐based structured play activities involving adult instruction, modeling, and response to child questions would result in an increase in social interaction with typically developing peers. A multiple baseline design across four participants with an embedded reversal was used to demonstrate the effects of the intervention on social interaction during structured play sessions. Initiations, responses, and interactive play increased for all participants. Generalization to novel peers was observed, and treatment gains were maintained during 6‐week follow‐up sessions. Recommendations for practitioners working with children with ASD in inclusive settings and potential areas of future research are discussed.     

Teaching children with autism to mand for social information

We replicated Shillingsburg et al. (2018) by teaching children with autism to mand for social information while analyzing the variables influencing the emission of mands. We presented questions about a social partner that were known and observable (e.g., “What is Robin doing?”), known but unobservable (i.e., questions for which an intraverbal response had previously been taught, such as, “Where does Robin work?”), or unknown (e.g., “What is Robin's favorite food?”). Correct answers were reinforced across all conditions. During treatment, we prompted children to mand for information from the social partner following only unknown questions. All children acquired mands for social information and answered previously unknown questions correctly after manding for social information and 3 of 4 participants emitted mands to novel social partners, including a peer with autism.     

Imitative interaction increases social interest and elicited imitation in non‐verbal children with autism

Recent studies indicate that being intensely imitated for a brief period of time increases social interest among children with autism. The aim of this study was to replicate and extend these findings. Twenty children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were randomly assigned to one of two interaction strategies: imitation (n=10) or contingent (n=10). The children had little or no functional speech, and their developmental age averaged 25 months (mean chronological age =6:5 years). Both conditions were presented with repeated sessions of a modified version of Nadel's ‘still‐face’ paradigm (still‐face/intervention/still‐face/spontaneous play). The analysis revealed a significant increase of both proximal and distal social behaviours (touch and look at person) for the imitation condition, which confirms previous reports. In addition, an increase in elicited imitation, as measured with the PEP‐R developmental assessment procedure, was also observed for children in the imitation condition, but not in the contingent condition. This finding extends earlier reports in that it suggests that the social expectancies unlocked by imitation also spread to tasks outside the experimental setting. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social stories, written text cues, and video feedback: effects on social communication of children with autism.

This study investigated the effects of written text and pictorial cuing with supplemental video feedback on the social communication of 5 students with autism and social deficits. Two peers without disabilities participated as social partners with each child with autism to form five triads. Treatment was implemented twice per week and consisted of 10 min of systematic instruction using visual stimuli, 10 min of social interaction, and 10 min of self‐evaluation using video feedback. Results showed increases in targeted social communication skills when the treatment was implemented. Some generalized treatment effects were observed across untrained social behaviors, and 1 participant generalized improvements within the classroom. In addition, naive judges reported perceived improvements in the quality of reciprocal interactions. These findings support recommendations for using visually cued instruction to guide the social language development of young children with autism as they interact with peers without disabilities.     

Comparing the teaching interaction procedure to social stories for people with autism

This study compared social stories and the teaching interaction procedure to teach social skills to 6 children and adolescents with an autism spectrum disorder. Researchers taught 18 social skills with social stories and 18 social skills with the teaching interaction procedure within a parallel treatment design. The teaching interaction procedure resulted in mastery of all 18 skills across the 6 participants. Social stories, in the same amount of teaching sessions, resulted in mastery of 4 of the 18 social skills across the 6 participants. Participants also displayed more generalization of social skills taught with the teaching interaction procedure to known adults and peers.     

Increasing response diversity in children with autism

Repetitive and invariant behavior is a diagnostic feature of autism. We implemented a lag reinforcement schedule to increase response diversity for 6 participants with autism aged 6 to 10 years, 4 of whom also received prompting plus additional training. These procedures appeared to increase the variety of building-block structures, demonstrating that an intervention that includes differential reinforcement can increase response diversity for children with an autism spectrum disorder.     

Increasing compliance with wearing a medical device in children with autism

Health professionals often recommend the use of medical devices to assess the health, monitor the well-being, or improve the quality of life of their patients. Children with autism may present challenges in these situations as their sensory peculiarities may increase refusals to wear such devices. To address this issue, we systematically replicated prior research by examining the effects of differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) to increase compliance with wearing a heart rate monitor in 2 children with autism. The intervention increased compliance to 100% for both participants when an edible reinforcer was delivered every 90 s. The results indicate that DRO does not require the implementation of extinction to increase compliance with wearing a medical device. More research is needed to examine whether the reinforcement schedule can be further thinned.     

Increasing compliance with medical examination requests directed to children with autism: effects of a high-probability request procedure

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a high-probability (high-p) request sequence as a means of increasing compliance with medical examination tasks. Participants were children who had been diagnosed with autism and who exhibited noncompliance during general medical examinations. The inclusion of the high-p request sequence effectively increased compliance with medical examination tasks. In addition, the procedure was efficient, could be implemented by parents and medical professionals, and did not involve aversive procedures.     

Increasing the vocal responses of children with autism and developmental disabilities using manual sign mand training and prompt delay

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of manual sign mand training combined with prompt delay and vocal prompting on the production of vocal responses in nonvocal children with developmental disabilities. A multiple baseline design across participants verified the effectiveness of this intervention. All participants showed increases in vocal responses following the implementation of the independent variables.     

Teaching children with autism to tact private events based on public accompaniments

We evaluated a method for teaching children with autism spectrum disorder to respond to tactile stimulation of multiple body parts. Various objects (e.g., hairbrush) produced the sensations (e.g., prickly). In a multiple baseline design across participants, participants learned 9 sensation body part tacts and the evaluation concluded with tests of generalization to 3 novel body parts, 6 novel objects, and 3 novel sensations. Participants demonstrated generalization to novel objects, and to a lesser extent, novel body parts, but did not generalize tacts to novel sensations. These findings are discussed in terms of implications for teaching children with autism to tact sensations.     

Effects of peer social initiations on the behavior of withdrawn preschool children

Social approach to peers was evaluated as an intervention for isolate preschoolers. During baseline, confederate peers made few social approaches to the target subjects. Confederates greatly increased their rate of social approaches during the first intervention, decreased social approaches during a second baseline, and increased social approaches again in a second intervention phase. Increases in confederate social initiations immediately increased the frequency of subjects' positive social behavior. Additionally, five of six subjects showed an increase in their own positive social initiations during intervention periods. The results suggest that: (a) peers may be programmed to increase the positive social behaviors of their isolate classmates, and (b) remediating social deficits requires assessment and intervention specifically tailored to the individual child.     

Exposure to a specific prompt topography predicts its relative efficiency when teaching intraverbal behavior to children with autism spectrum disorder

Comparisons of the relative efficiency of different prompt topographies (visual or auditory), when teaching intraverbal behavior to children with disabilities, have yielded idiosyncratic results. Recent research has shown that previous exposure to a specific prompt type may affect its efficiency when teaching intraverbal behavior to preschool children. The current study was an attempt to replicate these results with 3 children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. For all participants, increased exposure to one prompt topography was sufficient to make it relatively more efficient as measured by number of trials to criterion. These results suggest that previous history with a prompt type may predict its efficiency.     

Evaluation of stimulus intensity fading on reduction of rapid eating in a child with autism

This study assessed the effects of a vibrating pager on reduction of rapid eating. The study also evaluated two strategies for fading the pager, by intensity and by frequency. The pager was successful in decreasing the pace of eating to an appropriate level and the pager prompt was successfully faded. Fading by frequency was ineffective in maintaining an appropriate pace of eating while intensity fading was successful.     

Embedding an identity-matching task within a prompting hierarchy to facilitate acquisition of conditional discriminations in children with autism

Least-to-most prompting hierarchies (e.g., progressing from verbal to modeled to physical prompts until the target response occurs) may be ineffective when the prompts do not cue the individual to attend to the relevant stimulus dimensions. In such cases, emission of the target response persistently requires one or more of the higher level prompts, a condition called prompt dependence (Clark & Green, 2004). Reinforcement of differential observing responses (DORs) has sometimes been used to ensure that participants attend to the relevant stimulus dimensions in matching-to-sample (MTS) tasks (e.g., Dube & McIlvane, 1999). For 2 participants with autism, we embedded an identity-matching task within a prompting hierarchy as a DOR to increase the likelihood that the participants attended to and discriminated the relevant features of the comparison stimuli in an MTS task. This procedure was compared with a traditional least-to-most prompting hierarchy and a no-reinforcement control condition in a multielement design. Results for both participants indicated that mastery-level acquisition of spoken-word-to-picture relations occurred only under the identity-matching condition. Findings are discussed relative to the use of DORs to facilitate acquisition of conditional discriminations in persons with autism or other conditions who do not attend to the comparison stimuli.     

The effects of directive and nondirective prompts on noncompliant vocal behavior exhibited by a child with autism

Results of an analogue functional analysis indicated that noncompliant vocal behavior exhibited by a young girl with autism was maintained by negative reinforcement. Follow-up analyses suggested that the immediate escape contingency assessed in the demand condition did not appear to maintain the behavior. Instead, noncompliant vocal behavior occurred in response to directive prompts. Nondirective prompts reduced noncompliant vocal behavior to near zero.