ASA's 37th National Conference on Autism Spectrum Disorders (July 13-15, 2006)

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Saturday, July 15, 2006: 8:15 AM-9:30 AM
Kent/Bristol
#2170- Meaningful relationships: the development and improvement of social skills in children with autism.
In this program, participants will receive an overview of the current research practices for the social development of children with autism. Dr. Schwartz will review the research discussing what is known in the field and point to further areas of research. Mr. Jones will then examine influential factors of the family environment on the social and communicative development of children with autism. Further, Ms. Leon-Guerrero will discuss her research which explores social skills instruction within the classroom context.

Presenters:Ilene S. Schwartz, PhD, University of Washington, Full Professor, Area Chair - Dr. Schwartz co-wrote the book entitled, The Exceptional Child: Inclusion in Early Childhood Education (1996). She researches the social relationships of children with disabilities and early childhood education. Her research also includes studies of autism, effective classroom-based instructional strategies, and factors that affect the acceptability and sustainability of educational interventions. Dr. Schwartz is the co-creator of the DATA Project at the University of Washington lab school. Currently, Dr. Schwartz is the Principal Investigator for the Professional Development in Autism (PDA) Center. The PDA center is a federally funded grant which provides training to educators and administrators throughout the country.

Christopher D. Jones, PhC, BCBA, University of Washington, Graduate Student, University Lecturer - Mr. Jones’ research focuses on utilizing a variety of research methodologies to examine social development and family functioning in children with autism. His research supports an ecological model of early childhood social development by acknowledging that effective intervention for addressing the developmental needs of children with disorders needs to include all aspects of the child’s social environment, it needs to examine disorders as a developmental process, and it needs to use social cues from typically developing children to inform findings from populations of children with autism.

Rina-Marie Leon-Guerrero, PhC, BCBA, University of Washington, Graduate Student, Practicum Supervisor - Ms. Leon-Guerrero’s research focuses on evidence based interventions to promote the social and emotional development for children with autism. Her primary focus is exploring effective instructional strategies for teaching social skills within the context of students’ educational environments. She has researched teaching social skills in the context of extracurricular groups as well as groups within the classroom.

 
In the past decade we have seen a dramatic increase in research examining the social development of children with autism. Unfortunately, despite the dearth of information available, the social deficits seen in children with autism are still not fully understood. Additionally, how children with autism learn these skills remains controversial. This session will begin by discussing what we know and don't know about the social development of children with autism (Schwartz). Although it is known that communication and social interactions are two core deficits for individuals with autism, to what degree each child is affected varies widely. Because of the individual needs of the children we serve, it is important to individualize instruction and monitor student progress. We then will present two studies examining social skill development in two contexts.

In the first study, Mr. Jones will examine the social and communicative interactions within the family environment, mainly dinnertime (Jones). This study used observational methods to examine patterns in social interactions that may be specific to families that have children with autism. Initial examination of these data replicates previous research about the increased use of parental directive speech patterns (as opposed to more information seeking or neutral speech patterns) from caregivers of children with autism and/or other developmental disabilities. However, we also found that when a child with autism does direct speech toward members of his family, he frequently receives no acknowledgement or response from other family members. This replicates peer interactions noticed anecdotally during the therapeutic social skills groups for children with autism. During these groups the author noticed that children with autism have difficulty providing communicative reinforcement to their interactive partners, also known as reciprocal communication. However, the development of social communication is a bi-directional relationship between partners. While we know that children with autism often provide very little reinforcement to their communicative partners, it looks like their partners (at least in their families) also aren't reciprocating as often compared to families with typically developing children. There are important implications of this decreased response rate on the social development of the child with autism. Subsequent sequential analyses will be used to look for potential patterns in the prompt and response contingencies that may predict positive responding as well as non-responses. This information can have considerable implications for subsequent prevention of and intervention for dysfunctional communicative patterns specific to children with autism.

In the second study Ms. Leon-Guerrero will examine the development of social skills within the classroom context. Social skills are critical skills for young children with autism to develop as they enter school, form friendships and function in the social world. These critical skills are also very difficult skills to learn. Specifically, the complexity of seemingly simple skills and the rules of social interactions present many challenges for young children with autism. In order to target social skills for instruction, this study explored the use of the commercially available Skillstreaming Early Childhood curriculum for teaching social skills (McGinnis & Goldstein, 1990). In this study, four preschoolers with autism received explicit instruction on the social skills of greeting, sharing and playing with peers. Each preschooler received instruction in the context of small groups called “friendship group.” Friendships groups took place in the preschool classroom and included two typically developing peers. The three steps of instruction were presentation of the skill using a visual, teacher model with puppets and then student role play with teacher feedback. Findings of this study strongly suggest that children with autism did acquire critical social skills in the context of their classrooms when explicit instruction and visuals were utilized. However it is necessary to program for generalization to help children maintain and generalize these critical social skills and demonstrate these skills beyond the friendship groups.

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