Recess plays an integral role in the social and emotional development of children given the time provided to engage in interactions with others and practice important social skills. Students with ASD, however, typically fail to achieve even minimal benefit from recess due to social and communication impairments as well as a tendency to withdraw. Implementation of evidence-based interventions such as peer-mediated social skills groups, are necessary to ensure recess is an advantageous learning environment for students with ASD. A multiple-baseline design across participants was used to determine if a functional relationship exists between a social skills instructional program combined with peer networks with school staff as implementers and increases in level of communicative acts for participants with ASD at recess. Results indicate all participants demonstrated an immediate increase in the number of communicative acts with the introduction of the intervention. Implications for practice are discussed.

Peer networks including social groups using typical peers, scripted instruction, visual text cues, and reinforcement were examined with students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A multiple baseline design across four participants was used to measure students’ use of communication acts with peers during free play following instruction. Peer Network groups occurred over a 3-month period for 30 min 3 times per week. Visual inspection of trends and TauU effect size calculations showed significant changes in total communication acts for all four participants during peer network sessions and increased initiations for three of the four participants. Generalization probes during classroom centers indicated increased communications following interventions for three of the four participants.

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Supports are largely absent and tools are scarce to assist parents receiving home-based early intervention services (e.g., Early Head Start) with enriching the language learning environments of young children beyond home to the community. Talk Around Town is a wayfinding mobile application designed to provide real-time, location-specific, evidence-based communication strategies to parents in community settings (e.g., park, community center, store, library). The application uses Global Positioning System (GPS) functionality within smartphones and Google Maps to support caregiver talk in community locations. The purpose of this pilot study is to examine early childhood service providers’ and parents’ perceptions of Talk Around Town. Overall, parents and early childhood service providers’ perspectives were largely positive. Implications for future research are discussed (e.g., tailoring the application for Department of Human Services caseworkers).