Improvement of Conversation Skills through Script Fading in a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

The script fading procedure aims to develop better communication skills of children and youngsters with Autism Spectrum Disorder in relationship with other people. The procedure seeks to incorporate cues in several contexts. Scripts may be organized in day-today situations of life, such as playful interactions among children and the scripts may consist in pictorial, textual or auditory stimuli. If a learner, for example, lacks conversation skills, but has good repertoire regarding textual behavior, scripts consisting of written phrases may be presented and the learner has to read them. The listener may interact with the speaker like he is emitting responses free from the control of scripts. With repetitive exposure to the contingency and the establishment of a more fluent repertoire of textual behavior, the script is gradually faded out by word removal one by one. This process continues until the learner's responses become free from the control of the whole scripts. Previous research has demonstrated the establishment of independent performance, maintenance and generalization to different settings and listeners. The purpose of this study was to assess the efficacy of this procedure in establishing conversation skills in a child aged 9 with ASD. Textual scripts were applied to three sets of conversation. After a baseline condition, training started and the experimental control by the independent variable was established through a multiple baseline design across the three different conversation topics. Independent performance was successfully established through reinforcement of correct performance and error correction. Although the interventions were conducted in a university-based laboratory, the established repertoires generalized to the child's school classroom and another listeners (another adult and a child). Implications to school inclusion regarding the establishment of con-How to cite this paper: