Teaching children with autism to orient to social stimuli

Document Type

Thesis

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Degree

M.S. Applied Behavior Analysis

Date Completed

2013

First Committee Member

MacDonald, Rebecca

Second Committee Member

Dube, William

Third Committee Member

Thompson, Rachel

Abstract

"The purpose of this study was to teach three 2-year-old children with autism to orient to social stimuli (in the form of distress) using a multiple baselines across participants design. Orienting to distress in Hurt, Spill, and Choke scenarios was taught using social reinforcers in a multiple exemplar training format. Mastery of one distress scenario was followed by generalization probes across settings, across untrained distress scenarios, and across experimenters. Results showed that all participants acquired orienting to the Hurt scenario, and that two of the three participants showed generalization of skills to a different setting, untrained distress scenarios, and to a different experimenter. The implications of the use of the multiple exemplar training procedure and identified social reinforcers for teaching social orienting and other social behavior were discussed."

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