Association for Behavior Analysis International

There is little evidence that placing children with ASD in general education classrooms will automatically result in improved academic performance or social behaviors. Without interventions that are both effective and practical to implement, children with ASD in general education settings have been found to experience difficulty learning class curriculum, attending to teacher instruction, following classroom routines, and interacting with peers. Although there are many interventions that have been shown to be effective in clinical and special education settings, there is much less known about how to design and deliver interventions that can be implemented in general education classrooms for children with ASD. This symposium will present three interventions that hold promise as being both effective and practical to implement: social script training to increase peer interaction, priming to improve participation in class lessons and embedded instruction to teach child-specific objectives. The presentation will be data-based and involve children and adolescents with ASD attending general education classrooms.

Typically, children with ASD in general education settings show low levels of interacting with peers. There have been several interventions that demonstrate an improvement in the peer interaction of children with ASD when the intervention is in place, but fewer interventions have been able to demonstrate effects which generalize to increased peer interaction of children with ASD in settings where the intervention is not being implemented. The effects of social script training, peer buddies and a combination of both were examined on the interactive play of three young children with ASD in inclusive educational settings. Measures of the interactive play of each child with ASD in both a training and a generalization setting were measured in a multiple baseline design. Only the combination of social script training and peer buddies produced improved interactive play in a generalization setting. These results suggest that interventions that target a number of social behaviors associated with sustained peer interaction may need to be implemented in inclusive settings.

Embedded instruction consists of providing practice to a child on individual learning objectives during breaks in routines of general education classrooms. Embedded instruction been shown to be effective in teaching targeted learning outcomes. However, the number of practice trials of embedded instruction implemented in a school day reported in outcome studies typically has been low (i.e., 15 30 a day). A higher number of practice trials may be possible if the embedded instruction is implemented by the child with ASD, rather than an educator in the classroom. Embedded self-instruction may be introduced by having practice in the form of self-correcting flash cards which the child is cued to practice during brief interludes in the school day. This presentation will compare the effectiveness of embedded self-instruction to the more typical, teacher-delivered embedded instruction on the spelling performance of two children with ASD in general education classrooms. In preliminary evaluation, embedded self-instruction was associated with more frequent practice trials and produced higher levels of correct performance than teacher-delivered embedded instruction. These results suggest that embedded self-instruction may be a valuable addition in inclusion classrooms.

Compared to their typically developing classmates, children with ASD included in general education classrooms tend to have more difficulty learning class curriculum and participating during teacher presented lessons. One promising intervention is priming which consists of providing a child with practice at home or in a resource room at school of a problem situation that the child encounters in the classroom (e.g., correct answering of arithmetic problems; raising hand to answer teacher questions in a lesson). Only a few studies have examined the effectiveness of priming on the classroom performance of children with ASD. This study will present the results of priming of class arithmetic lessons at home by a tutor on childrens test performance and participation during arithmetic lessons of two children aged, 8 and 10 years with ASD in general education classrooms. Using a non-concurrent multiple baseline design, priming was introduced at home in the evening before a weekly arithmetic test in the classroom. The children showed an increase in correct performance with the introduction of priming. Priming holds promise as a practical and effective intervention for children with ASD in general education settings.