Use of social referencing to teach safety to toddlers with autism

Document Type

Thesis

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Degree

M.S. Applied Behavior Analysis

Date Completed

2018

First Committee Member

MacDonald, Rebecca

Second Committee Member

Hanley, Gregory

Third Committee Member

Ahearn, William

Abstract

"The purpose of this study was to teach safety skills to 2 toddlers with autism through a social referencing chain using a concurrent multiple probe across stimulus sets, a concurrent multiple probe across stimulus categories within subjects, and a non-concurrent multiple baseline across participants design. Participants were trained using differential reinforcement and least-to-most prompting to gaze shift from an item to an adult and reach or use an “all done” response based on the adult’s facial expression. Two sets of items were used- edible and inedible, and safe and dangerous. Mastery with one set of items within a category was followed by a probe with all items from a category. Probes were followed by subsequent training of sets of categories until mastery criteria was met for all sets of items for both categories. Mastery of the skill with the stimuli used in training were followed by social referencing probes where the child could not see the items within the bin or lunchbox and a novel items probe where unfamiliar items were presented in the bin and lunchbox. Results show acquisition of both discrimination between safe and dangerous stimuli and the maintenance of a social referencing chain in the presence of ambiguous stimuli. These findings are discussed as they relate to the implications of teaching socially valid safety skills to toddlers with autism."

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