Association for Behavior Analysis International

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder and other developmental disabilities often demonstrate deficits in conversation and professional skills, and thus may have difficulty developing friendships and finding employment. The growing literature on social skills has evaluated teaching conversation and professional skills as well as using normative data to determine what skills should be taught. This symposium will begin with Sylvia Aquino presenting descriptive data on how individuals respond to preferred, neutral, and nonpreferred topics of conversations. The authors found that the frequency of comments and length of utterances changed depending on the type of conversation topic. The second presenter, Whitney Pubylski-Yanofchick will discuss teaching adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder to initiate and respond to professional emails. As a result of a sequential training progression from group instruction to individualized training with feedback and error correction, all participants learned to compose professional emails. Last, Brandt Kail will discuss teaching adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder to use virtual platforms and interact with others in a virtual setting. Using behavioral skills training, feedback, and reinforcement, all participants acquired the necessary requisite skills to be successful in virtual meetings.

BACB and SLP

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an environment where social and professional interactions are more likely to occur in a virtual setting than ever before. In this study, 4 adults with ASD were taught skills to improve participation in virtual meetings. Participants learned how to use their microphones and cameras more appropriately and to make encouraging statements to one another while discussing current events and vocational-based lessons via Zoom™. The experimenter used a multiple baseline design across behaviors to evaluate the effects of behavioral skills training, feedback, and reinforcement in the form of praise, virtual tokens, and gift cards to increase the targeted behaviors during 2-hour virtual sessions. Skills increased and maintained at levels substantially above baseline even after the experimenter faded the contingencies for appropriate responding and delivered reinforcement solely for attendance. Tests for generalization across instructors and activities yielded promising results. These findings suggest that adults with ASD can benefit from group-based telehealth ABA services to improve skills needed to interact successfully with others in a virtual format.

Adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience challenges securing and maintaining employment. One requisite skill to employment is professional conduct. Although there are a cluster of behaviors related to professional conduct, one skill in which unprofessional behavior can become apparent is writing and responding to professional emails. The purpose of this study was to teach adults with ASD to initiate and respond to professional emails. Our participants were five adult males diagnosed with ASD. All participants attended a university-based employment support program. We rated their emails on the level of professionalism. We used behavioral skills training to teach the participants via remote instruction to initiate and respond to professional emails based on vignettes. BST training components were systematically introduced from most efficient (i.e., group instruction) to most intensive (i.e., individual training with feedback and error correction). Following the BST group training, one of the five participants met criteria on responding to professional emails. Individualized training with feedback was conducted for all five participants for one or both type of email. At least two of the participants required a more intrusive, individual training with error correction, under which one participant met mastery criterion for both types of emails. The results of this study showed that it is possible to teach adults with ASD to initiate and respond to emails in a professional manner. This is one, of many, skills that individuals of ASD will need to master in order to obtain and maintain employment.