Initiating social interactions is a major skill deficit among children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), so the purpose of this study was to assess the effects of direct instruction and social reinforcement on the performance and generalization of social initiation across toy tasks and variations of those tasks. A multiple probe design was used to assess the effects of training joint attention initiation using social reinforcers across 9 toy variations. Participants were taught to initiate a bid for joint attention by looking at the toy and then to the adult, by making a comment about the toy, and by gesturing toward the completed toy activity to the adult. Gaze shift, comment, and gesture were taught using a teacher model plus least-to-most prompting with preferred social stimulation provided as reinforcement for correct responding. Generalization probes were conducted within and across tasks to untrained task variations throughout the experiment. Four out of 5 participants acquired the target behavior. A treatment package including least-to-most prompting, experimenter model, and social reinforcers was effective in facilitating acquisition within and across toy tasks and generalization of the acquired skills was observed to untrained stimuli. These data were presented as a poster at BABAT 2015.
Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC)
Autism Research Database (AFD)
