Teaching children with autism to initiate joint attention using social reinforcers

Document Type

Thesis

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Degree

M.S. Applied Behavior Analysis

Date Completed

2015

First Committee Member

Ahearn, William H.

Second Committee Member

Thompson, Rachel

Third Committee Member

MacDonald, Rebecca

Abstract

"Joint attention is a critical skill for the development of language, social behavior, and learning. Although joint attention occurs in early childhood in typically developing children, research suggests that joint attention may be limited in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The purpose of the present study was to assess the effects of direct instruction and social reinforcement on the performance and generalization of joint attention initiation across toy tasks and variations of those tasks. Five participants diagnosed with an ASD participated in the study. We used a multiple probe design to assess the effects of training joint attention initiation using social reinforcers across 9 toy variations. Participants were taught to initiate a bid for joint attention by looking at the toy and then to the adult, by making a comment about the toy, and by gesturing toward the completed toy activity to the adult. Gaze shift, comment, and gesture were taught using a teacher model plus least-to-most prompting with preferred social stimulation provided as reinforcement for correct responding. Generalization probes were conducted within and across tasks to untrained task variations throughout the experiment. Four out of 5 participants acquired the target behavior. A treatment package including least-to-most prompting, experimenter model, and social reinforcers was effective in facilitating acquisition within and across toy tasks. Generalization of the acquired skills was observed to untrained stimuli."

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