Improving Reciprocal Conversation and Social Preference of Children With Autism

Abstract

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often have difficulties initiating and maintaining reciprocal conversations with others. In this study, we examined if an interdependent group contingency would improve reciprocal conversation of children with ASD when they were paired as conversational partners. We also assessed children’s social preference through their choices between spending time with their peers or by themselves. In a multiple-baseline design, we found that the group contingency immediately produced independent reciprocal conversational responses, sustained conversational exchanges, and increased preference for peers across all participants. Improvements were further maintained even after the group contingency was removed and novel peers were introduced.

Peer-Mediated Intervention to Teach Social Interaction to People with Autism: A Systematic Review

“…Acquisition was effective in 82.9% (N = 58) of studies (e.g., Yuan & Chen, 2020). One study had non-effective acquisition (Trembath et al, 2009) and 12.9% (N = 9) had partially effective results (e.g., Sreckovic et al, 2017).…”

“…One study did not report the exact age of the participants (Simpson, 2020). Most studies were conducted with children (79.1%, N = 47) (e.g., Urlacher et al, 2016;Yuan & Chen, 2020). Twenty-two studies (31.3%) were conducted with adolescent participants (e.g., Thomas & Bambara, 2020) and ten with adults (14.3%) (Ashbaugh et al, 2017;Davis et al, 2017).…”

“…A total of 479 peers participated in the experiments (considering experiments that provided this information). Two studies did not describe the characteristics of the peers (Kamps et al, 2014;Lorah et al, 2014) and 68 (97.2%) provided information such as age, gender, number of peers, and presence or absence of developmental delay (see Table 2) (e.g., Oh-Young et al, 2018;Thomas & Bambara, 2020;Yuan & Chen, 2020).…”

“…In 45 studies, the peers were between two and 11 years old (e.g., Urlacher et al, 2016;Yuan & Chen, 2020), in 21 they were between 12 and 17 years old (e.g., Schmidt & Stichter, 2012;Thomas & Bambara, 2020), and in three articles they were 18 years old and older (Ackerman et al, 2021;Bambara et al, 2016;Hochman et al, 2015). In 20 articles, peers' age was not reported (e.g., Kamps et al, 2014).…”