Association for Behavior Analysis International

An activity schedule is a set of words or pictures that cue an individual to complete a series of steps (McClannahan & Krantz, 2010). Previous research has demonstrated the utility of activity schedules in promoting independent play and social game play in children with ASD; however, promoting more dynamic social play in children with ASD using this technology has yet to be investigated. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of teaching the use of activity schedules with embedded scripts on the sociodramatic play of preschoolers with ASD with their typically developing peers. We also examined the extent to which we could remove scripts and schedule components while continuing to observe sociodramatic play. Two participants with ASD quickly demonstrated high levels of sociodramatic play with their typically developing peers compared to baseline, and an additional participant with ASD demonstrated similar increases with procedural modifications. All three participants continued to engage in sociodramatic play after all scripts and nearly all components of the activity schedules were systematically removed, including during follow-up sessions. In addition, all participants engaged in additional unscheduled yet contextually appropriate social play behaviors.

Play is thought to be an important part of human development. Although children of typical development spend the majority of their time engaged in play activities, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often present with substantial delays in the development of play. This study compared the acquisition of play skills using play targets that were development-matched (DM) compared to play targets that were age-matched (AM), determined from the results of the Developmental Play Assessment (DPA; Lifter, Edwards, Avery, Anderson, & Sulzer-Azaroff, 1988). The primary intervention was in vivo modeling. The dependent variables included play actions and vocalizations. Generalization was programmed for by teaching to three sets of toys for both the DM condition and the AM condition. In addition, a preference assessment was conducted before, during, and after the intervention to assess participant preference for the toys used in the study. Social validity measures were conducted to assess the goals, procedures, and outcome of the study. The participants demonstrated acquisition with the DM play targets and not the AM play targets. In addition, participants engaged in scripted actions during generalization probes (with novel toys) and during independent probes (experimenter not sitting with participant) in the DM condition. Last, participants maintained the play targets in the DM condition.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have difficulties initiating and sustaining conversations. Although there are several established interventions which target initiations and responses to questions or comments made by others, there are fewer interventions which target sustaining conversations with multiple exchanges. A review of the literature revealed a variety of methodologies to teach individuals to engage in a multi-exchange conversation. The use of text messaging technology creates an electronic script that is portable, more socially acceptable compared to printed script, and creates a flexible means of prompting within a fast-paced changing social environment. The purpose of the current study is to replicate and extend the findings of Grosberg and Charlop (2017) by ensuring the researcher is not visible to the participants during any of the research sessions. In addition, we have included a pre-measure to better identify appropriate conversation partners and collect data on the conversation partner as well as the participant’s responding during sessions.