Abstract
The present case study used a multiple treatment design to assess the effects of two interventions—Peer social initiations and target child initiations— on the social and disruptive behavior of a high-functioning autistic child. Intervention included initiation training and videotaped feedback highlighting successful and unsuccessful initiations. During Interventions 1 and 2, nonhandicapped peers were trained to initiate social interaction with the autistic child, resulting in an increase in social interaction which dramatically decreased in a reversal phase. Social interaction quickly increased again in Intervention 3 when the autistic child was trained to initiate interaction using the same procedures. During Interventions 1 and 2 no decrease in the autistic child's disruptive behaviors was observed; however during Intervention 3 these behaviors decreased to a low rate. Social validation, generalization, and maintenance of these behavior changes are discussed.
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This research was supported by U.S. Public Health Service research grants MH 39434 and MH 28210 from the National Institute of Mental Health. The authors are grateful for the participation of the children and the parents. We thank the teachers for their cooperation in the school setting. We also thank Lauren Loos, Kim Litzenberg, and Wendy Kaneko for all their assistance on scoring procedures and data collection and Jamie Reed-Sutton for her assistance collecting social validation data.
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Oke, N.J., Schreibman, L. Training social initiations to a high-functioning autistic child: Assessment of collateral behavior change and generalization in a case study. J Autism Dev Disord 20, 479–497 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02216054
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02216054