Assessing and enhancing the quality of social interactions with children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder

Document Type

Thesis

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Degree

M.S. Applied Behavior Analysis

Date Completed

2012

First Committee Member

Ahearn, William

Second Committee Member

Karsten, Amanda

Third Committee Member

MacDonald, Rebecca

Abstract

"The purpose of this study was to examine responsiveness to social stimuli during free choice between social interaction and solitary play and to determine whether preference for social interaction can be changed. A second purpose was to evaluate the joint engagement experience between the participant and therapist by using a code based on Adamson, Bakeman, and Deckner (2004). Two children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) participated in a concurrent choice assessment (Harding, Wacker, Berg, Cooper, Asmus, Mlelia, & Muller, 1999), to determine a level of social interaction prior to training. Following the concurrent choice assessment a social reinforcer assessment (Smaby, MacDonald, Ahearn, & Dube, 2007) was conducted to identify social stimuli that functioned as reinforcers. Social skills that were absent in the initial assessment were trained using prompt fading. Reinforcers identified in the social reinforcer assessment were used as reinforcers when training the social skills. Post-training, the concurrent choice assessment was repeated to determine if exposure to social stimuli would increase preference for social interaction and the social behavior emitted in this assessment. Post-assessment sessions indicated the emergence of social skills that were not previously present for one participant."

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