Teaching social skills to autistic children (200.52 kB)

Vince LaMarca, certified behavior analyst and editor at the Lovaas Institute-Indianapolis

Teaching social skills to autistic children in behavior therapy is constantly changing, perhaps more than any other aspect. Only the "Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis" contains frequent articles on the teaching skills of interaction in the game, on the development of creativity and spontaneity, and the development of discursive abilities. These articles are visible to the public on http://seab.envmed.rochester.edu/jaba/ (Start with a full-text search (full-text search) or go directly to "Table of Contents").

Even if the learning of social skills of the Lovaas Institute are many and complex may be useful to familiarize yourself with some general points.

Step 1

Define one or more measurable in terms of social behavior that the child must learn

The behaviors that we teach the child can be defined in a generic way (eg participate in a group play) or more specific (eg responding to a peer). The behavior you choose can be verbal (eg, support an argument in a conversation) or nonverbal (facial expression to respond to a peer, such as a smile, approaching him). Whatever the nature of the behavior chosen, the first step is to define them in terms of observation and measurement so that the instructor can record the events of the behavior, the usefulness or not of a prompt, the prompt removal processes, the ' effectiveness or not of a type of reinforcement, a roadmap for the removal of the reinforcement, and finally the necessary support to the generalization of new behaviors through people and situations and over time, and the removal of the support.

Examples of definitions of social behavior can be found in Pierce and Schreibman (1995) on the teaching of complex social behaviors in autistic children. Nell'articolo sono definiti altri comportamenti come "mantenimento dell'interazione", "avvio al gioco", "disimpegno", "osservazione", "concentrazione sugli oggetti, "supporto all'attenzione condivisa" e "coordinamento dell'attenzione condivisa". An example is the definition of "start-up of speech" as "an expression that does not respond directly to a previous question or post at least 5 seconds after a previous expression. For example, expressions like" the ball is blue "or" I like pizza " were recorded as the start of speech. ^"(1) In other behaviors are defined as" maintenance of the interaction, "" Start the game "," disengagement "," observation "," concentration on objects, "to support ' shared attention "and" coordinating shared attention. "

Step 2

Use separate event to discuss techniques with a child, to teach new social behaviors

The skills learned by a child in the early and intermediate stages of behavioral therapy are the necessary structure for learning new skills in complex social stages. The discussion can be pre-established an effective technique for the introduction of topics related to the report, but avoid being regarded as the only possible because rarely leads to total mastery of the skills discussed. However, the discussion is often a crucial element in the totality of the learning process.

You can read and comment on stories with your child relational argument. For example, the book The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister, the story of a beautiful fish who learns to make friends by sharing what he holds dear-his shining-scales includes topics such as:

• The importance of sharing
• As we appreciate our things and we are sad when someone hurts

When reading the child learns to respond to questions such as:

• What does the protagonist?
• How do you feel?
• Why do you feel this way?
• What can you do to him?
• What do you think will happen next? Why?
• What would you do if you were the protagonist? Why?

Books must be read and commented several times or until the child does not respond readily to questions on specific relational themes showing that you understand the situation described. Necklaces such as Franklin, and Arthur Berenstain Bears are often helpful for children who are learning to understand the relational situations.

The teaching of specific social behaviors is often a crucial point regardless of the stories. At first Brian has encountered some difficulties in initiating conversations with peers. He tried to speak, but was ignored because his peers are tired of hearing the same two sentences every time he addressed them. To help him overcome his difficulties was planned intervention on the ability to start the speech, which was first to teach Brian the changes in a face to face with his instructor. Brian has learned how to:

• pay compliments to the instructor
• ask a question on the activity in which the instructor was engaged
• to comment on what the instructor was doing
• ask a question about something they knew they liked the instructor
• make a comment about something he knew they liked the instructor, such as movies, sports, food, etc..

Once Brian has learned these skills with a specific instructor, the same procedure was repeated (generalized) with other instructors, and then gradually extended to Brian's classmates.

To further help Brian, the instructors have made ​​posters showing phrases that Brian could have used to start an interaction with peers. Taking as reference the comments on the posters, Brian has learned to respond to the following instructions:

• Say the name of a way you can start a conversation. Say the name of another way you can start a conversation.
• What would you say to Michael if I wanted to talk to her?
• What would you say to Doug if he were playing with cars?
• What would you say to Charlie if he took his cowboy hat for the "show and tell"?

Eventually Brian knew the answers by heart and there was no need of the poster. The next step was to teach Brian to use these expressions to school (see Step 4)

Step 3

Facilitate the extension of social skills training to their peers through video and role playing.

As mentioned above, the ability to talk about what someone should do does not coincide with the ability to do so. For this reason, discussions of social behavior are often made ​​out or assisted role-playing games related to the relational context discussed. For example, when Brian has learned to answer questions like those listed above, the instructors have taught him to start a conversation with them through role-play. The teacher pretended to be a schoolmate of his, and he and Brian set out to turn a discourse based on a different situation. In one, the companion play with a toy, another is standing in the middle of the room, and a third is making a drawing.

The video training proved to be an effective teaching strategy to facilitate the generalization of social skills. ⁽²⁾

Step 4

Moving from a situation made ​​for educational purposes in everyday situations.

The limited space allows instructors to teach new social skills in a controlled and systematic. However, the child must put them into practice in real situations and less predictable. During the transition from situations in premeditated real situations the child is often supported by an instructor that can help keep stimulating positive results, if necessary, behavior or offering additional reinforcement to increase the likelihood that the child takes the behavior in the face to face with their peers.

In the case of Brian instructors have again used a poster and introduced a system of rewards for help in the early phase of transition. The poster reported the conversation with all the ideas which Brian had practiced and instructors have taught him to record (self-) specific to the starting point each day by writing an X next to it on the poster. If you could write an X next to 3 different points in a day, was given a special surprise (rewards system). Since the interaction with peers were reinforcer for Brian, a further reinforcement by the instructor was not necessary once the posters were removed. Due to the change of ideas mates Brian began to respond by providing a friendly nature of the reinforcement he needed to use a relational language diversified. Brian's instructors have taught at the same time comments on new ideas for conversation so that, over time, learn to create variations by itself.

Step 5

Check the strength of social skills

One of the primary goals of teaching social skills to autistic children is the development of successful social relationships on their own. For this last phase of the teaching of social skills is the verification of their strength. In other words, the instructor must be sure that the child is actually able to use the social skills acquired. For example, the intensification of particular social behaviors learned improves the child's ability to interact with others? If this does not happen the situation must be reevaluated. It is important to closely observe and record the child's social behavior, or their absence, to determine whether the skills taught have been generalized for all types of situation, environment and person. You may need to extend the use of extension strategies generally, or the need may arise from the observation that the child acquires additional capacity in this area to be helped in the development of social relations.

Bibliography

¹ Pierce, K., & Schreibman, L. (1995). , 28. Increasing complex social behaviors in children with autism: Effects of peer-implemented pivotal response training. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 28. 285-296.

Original document from the site of ' Lovaas Institute Translation by This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >George Antonioli