 Dr. Marjorie H. Charlop-Christy is Professor of Psychology at Claremont McKenna College and the Director of The Claremont Autism Center, her renowned research and treatment center for children with autism and their families. Through her research, teaching, and writing, Dr. Charlop-Christy has made prolific contributions to the field of autism. Dr. Charlop-Christy has hundreds of professional conference presentations, workshops, and publications in the field of autism. Her book, “How to Treat the Child with Autism”, has been translated into Spanish and Chinese. Her upcoming book, “How to do Incidental Teaching with Autistic Spectrum Disorders” will soon be released. Dr. Charlop-Christy has served as both Associate Editor, Editorial Board member, and ad hoc reviewer for numerous journals in the field of Autism/MR and applied behavioral analysis. She is known for her informative yet lively presentation style. |
| Abstract: Deficits in social behavior are a core feature of children with autism. Social skills have been defined as specific, identifiable skills that form the basis of social competency, such as the contextually appropriate application of motor, cognitive, and affective behaviors. The literature is replete with various applications of ABA oriented social skills programs. However, many programs are limited to acquisition of isolated social behaviors, or small changes in such, without pervasive generalization and maintenance effects. This presentation will focus on those interventions that have been empirically verified, and have shown the most promise in terms of generalization and maintenance of social behaviors for children with autism. These interventions include Naturalistic Teaching Strategies, Incidental Teaching, Video Modeling, and Photo Scheduling. These interventions are perhaps the most successful because they focus on teaching children with autism using motivational techniques, facilitators of generalization, and visual strategies which often present material in a learner friendly manner. New data will be presented comparing some of these procedures to well-used but poorly investigated popular press programs. |