Research suggests that observational learning, a critical skill needed for the acquisition of social skills as well as learning within traditional educational settings, may be limited in children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (Varni et al., 1979). The purpose of this study was to develop an assessment to test for observational learning across academic and leisure tasks and to teach observational learning if deficit. Following an initial assessment, a multiple probe design across task types and across observational learning task variants demonstrated acquisition of observational learning skills across multiple exemplars. Following training (i.e., attending, imitation, successive discrimination, conditional discrimination in the form of monitoring consequences), all participants engaged in observational learning across multiple stimuli and demonstrated generalization across stimuli. These data were presented at APBA 2014, BABAT 2014, CEC 2015, & APBA 2016.
Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC)
Autism Research Database (AFD)
