Use of social referencing to respond in the context novel stimuli

Document Type

Thesis

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Degree

M.S. Applied Behavior Analysis

Date Completed

2019

First Committee Member

MacDonald, Rebecca

Second Committee Member

Henley, Amy

Third Committee Member

Dickson, Chata

Abstract

"The purpose of the study was to teach two children with autism, aged 2-2.5, to discriminate between socially relevant safe and dangerous stimuli using a social referencing chain. Participants were trained using least-to-most prompting to gaze shift from a safe or dangerous item, to the experimenter’s face, and to then reach for the item or provide an all done response based upon the experimenter’s facial expression. After mastery of 40 safe and dangerous stimuli, probes were conducted within the child’s natural environment, for untrained items, and items the child could not see. The study employed a multiple baseline design. Results indicate that participants acquired discrimination skills between safe and dangerous items, which generalized to the natural environment, untrained items, and items the child could not see. Findings validate a protocol for teaching a social referencing chain to help children gain safety skills in their natural environment."

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