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Improving Social Interactions for Children With Autism |
Saturday, May 26, 2018 |
11:00 AM–11:50 AM |
Manchester Grand Hyatt, Harbor Ballroom C |
Area: TBA; Domain: Applied Research |
Chair: Nicole Luke (Surrey Place Centre) |
CE Instructor: Nicole Luke, Ph.D. |
Abstract: We present three studies teaching social interaction-related skills to children with autism spectrum disorder. The first study used intraverbal training to improve object substitution symbolic play behavior for children who lacked such play skills. The second study used a speaker immersion approach to increase |
Instruction Level: Basic |
Keyword(s): social interaction |
Target Audience: BCBAs, BCaBAs, special education teachers, applied researchers, autism researchers |
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Effects of Speaker Immersion on the Increase of Spontaneous Mands and Tacts |
HYOUJA LEE (National University of Transportation, Korea), Hye-Suk Lee Park (KAVBA ABA Children's Center), Hyomin Ahn (KAVBA ABA Children's Center), Sujeong Kim (KAVBA ABA Children's Center), Hyejeong Jang (KAVBA ABA Children's Center), Yeonhee Yu (KAVBA ABA Children's Center) |
Abstract: The study was conducted for 2 four-year old girls and 3 4- or 5-year old boys with developmental disabilities in a private agency. All of the participants had mands and tact but didn’t show spontaneous mands and tacts. Data were collected in a multiple baseline across participant design.
Target behaviors were spontaneous mands and tacts when relevant establishing operations were in place. Intervention was teaching to mand. Relevant establishing operations were manipulated during daily routine such as using bathroom or snack time. The children needed to mand for each step of daily routine in order to complete the routine. For example, the children were required to mand for pulling up pants, using soap, water, paper towel and etc. in order to finish using the bathroom. 15-16 establishing operations were manipulated during the intervention. During the baseline, the establishing operations were in place and the experimenters waited 3 to 5 seconds for spontaneous mands from the children. When the children manded for the step, they were allowed to do the step. If not, the experimenter waited another 3 to 5 seconds, and allowed them to do the step.
During the intervention, the experimenter provided echoic prompts if the children didn’t emit independent mands within 3 to 5 seconds. The prompted mands were followed immediate reinforcement. Generalizations were tested in other settings such as art activity or free plays. Spontaneous tacts were also tested to see whether increasing spontaneous mands during daily routine induce increased tacts. The results showed that the intervention procedure were effective in increasing independent mands during training sessions. The results of generalizations and increasing tacts varied across the participants. |
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Increasing "Object-Substitution" Symbolic Play in Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders |
GABRIELLE T. LEE (Chongqing Normal University), Hua Feng (National ChangHua University of Education), Sheng Xu (Chongqing Normal University), ShaoJu Jin (Sichuan University of Arts and Sciences) |
Abstract: Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) may not develop symbolic play skills so such skills need to be taught specifically. We report an experiment regarding a procedure targeting "object-substitution" symbolic play skills. The "object-substitution" symbolic play behavior occurred when the child labeled a common object with the name of a substitute and used the object to perform a play action (e.g., As she put a bowl on her head, she called it a hat). A multiple probe across behaviors design was employed with five children (four boys and one girl, aged 3 to 6) with ASD. All children had verbal communication and demonstrated functional play and generalized imitation, but no symbolic play skills prior to the study. The instruction consisted of intraverbal training, picture prompts, and modeling of play actions. All children demonstrated object-substitution symbolic play skills after the instruction. The occurrences of response generalization were also discussed. |
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Teaching Children With Autism to Relate Self to Others |
WENCHU SUN (National Changhua University of Education), Hua Feng (National ChangHua University of Education) |
Abstract: One of the major characters of children with autism is having difficulty to establish social relationship with others. The basic challenge is to relate self to others, or have difficulty to pay attention to people around. Teaching the children to pay attention to people around,( such as: what color of the person's hair is, tact the person who possessed specific object, and who is looking at you, etc.) are the fundamental skills the children with autism to relate self to others, and later for facilitating social interaction. The purpose of this study is to use behavior analytic approach to teach children with autism to pay attention to people and also to be aware of whether is someone looking at her. One child, age 4, diagnosed with autism, who can tact over 50 items and had basic listener skills, participated in this study. Three behaviors were targeted in order to teach her to pay attention to people around and start to relate self to others. Three target behaviors included:(a) tact a person's name and tact his/her color of hair or clothes, or to touch other's ear or shoulder, upon requested, e.g., when teacher asked what color Mary's clothes is, the child can response correctly; or when presenting two persons, teach would ask the child to touch Jenny's shoulder, the child do it upon request; (b) Observe and tact the person who possessed specific object, e.g., upon requested, the child can tact the person has red toy car on hand, (c) observe and tell who is watching at me (the subject), eg., when presenting two persons, the child can tact the one who is looking at her . Multiple probe across behaviors were used to validate effectiveness of the strategies in this study. The results showed positive results across the three behaviors both in the acquisition level and generalization effects. Parent's report and social validity data also showed favor results. Real life generalization and its impacts on the child's everyday life will be discussed. In addition, future research suggestion will be provided at the end of the paper. |
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