Association for Behavior Analysis International

Individuals diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder have qualitative impairments in social behavior, which can range from withdrawing from others to a failure to develop meaningful friendships. These impairments in social behavior can lead to negative long term outcomes such as loneliness, depression, and, in the most extreme cases, thoughts or attempts of suicide. In this symposium, three papers will be presented that evaluated different interventions to improve the social behaviors for individuals diagnosed with autism. The first paper will describe a modified teaching interaction procedure to teach specific social skills to individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and who had an intellectual disability. The second paper evaluated the effects of conditioning social reinforcement to individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The third paper evaluated the methodological soundness of previous studies evaluating social stories, opinions of several behavior analysts on social stories, and, finally, comparing social stories to the cool versus not cool procedure. Throughout the entire symposium, the authors and discussant will provide clinical recommendations and ideas for future research.

BCBAs, graduate students

Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have qualitative impairments in social behavior which can range from rejecting others to failure to develop meaningful friendships. Thus, it is important for researchers to evaluate various methodologies that engender social behavior. One methodology which has been implemented with may children diagnosed with autism, and has a growing body of empirical support, is the teaching interaction procedure (TIP). The TIP consists of labeling and describing the behavior, providing a meaningful rationale, breaking the skill into smaller components, teacher demonstration of the behavior, the learner role-playing the behavior, and the provision of the feedback. This study implemented a modified TIP to teach social skills to three children diagnosed with ASD and an intellectual disability. A multiple baseline design across social skills, replicated across participants, was utilized to evaluate the effects of the modified TIP. The results showed the TIP resulted in acquisition, maintenance, and generalized of the targeted social skills for all participants. Clinical implications and future directions will be discussed within the presentation.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have qualitative impairments in social interactions and often prefer food or tangible reinforcement to social reinforcement. Therefore, therapists working with children diagnosed with ASD often utilize food or tangible items as reinforcers to increase appropriate behaviors or decrease aberrant behaviors. The goal of the present study was to shift childrens preference from a highly preferred tangible item to an initially non-preferred social reinforcer using an observational conditioning procedure. Participants observed a known peer engage in a simple task and select the social reinforcer that was not preferred by the participant. The observation procedure resulted in a shift of preference toward the social reinforcer with all participants. Maintenance data demonstrated that although the preference change did not endure for one of the participants, it was quickly re-established with additional observational trials. Results provided further support for the use of observational procedures to alter preferences. Clinical implications and future directions will be discussed within the presentation.