Association for Behavior Analysis International

This symposium will be comprised of data-based presentations that describe different types of behavioral interventions to teach 3 different types of social skills to children with developmental and learning disabilities. In the first study, the authors implemented a multiple schedule arrangement in public education classrooms to participants who approached their teachers at high rates during independent work time. A multiple schedule arrangement with spoken and written rules resulted in immediate decreases in social approaches for all participants. Effects maintained with a substitute teacher and when written rules were removed. In the second study, the authors used a multiple probe design across3 board games to evaluate the effects of video modeling on social commenting of three children with autism. Results showed the number of target comments increased when video modeling was introduced and maintained at criterion level at 2-, 4-, and 6-week follow-up probes. The third study was an evaluation of a treatment package including multiple exemplar training, video modeling, prompting, and reinforcement to teach 3 adolescents with autism to help others (Reeve, Reeve, Townsend, & Poulson, 2007). Results demonstrated that all the participants acquired a repertoire of helping behavior with the application of the treatment package.

Children with autism have marked deficits in social interaction and communication including difficulty initiating play, initiating conversation, and display a lack of social reciprocity skills. These skills are necessary to be included in activities with typically developing peers. Video modeling has been shown to be effective at increasing social commenting during play in children with autism. However, no research has increased social commenting while playing a board game. This study used a multiple probe design across 3 board games to evaluate the effects of video modeling on social commenting of 3 children with autism when playing a board game. Results show the number of scripted comments increased when video modeling was introduced and maintained at criterion level at 2, 4, and 6 week follow-up, while the rate of unscripted comments decreased when video modeling was introduced. The percentage of scripted commenting for generalization across settings was generally high while generalization to other peers and games was low. Limitations and future research ideas are discussed.

In this study, a multiple baseline design across participants was used to assess whether a treatment package including multiple exemplar training, video modeling, prompting and reinforcement could teach 3 adolescents with autism to help others (Reeve, Reeve, Townsend, & Poulson, 2007). Based upon observations of typically developing adolescents, the experimenter identified 5 categories of helping behavior (i.e., distributing materials, putting items away, operating a door for others, obtaining items out of reach and locating missing items). Each category of helping behavior was represented by multiple exemplars. The participants received training on 3 of 5 helping categories. The remaining 2 categories were assessed for generalization. The results demonstrated that all the participants acquired a repertoire of helping behavior with the application of the treatment package. These results replicated those of the original (Reeve et al., 2007) study with an older population and age-appropriate helping behaviors. Generalization data were not as consistent as the original study. Pre- and post-intervention generalization probes showed some generalization across instructors, settings, and categories of helping behavior.