The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

The dictionary lists one of the definitions of generalization as “use of learned response”. Students with autism often learn social and communication skills in one setting and have difficulty using these skills in other settings. Parents often express frustration that there is a mismatch between what their children can do in school and what they can do at home. When educators create a plan, the student’s IEP lists specific social and communication skills to be achieved, but the criteria for “mastery” (i.e., generalization) and the methods to be used are often arbitrary and general (e.g., student will demonstrate skill X in 3 settings using ABA instructional strategies).

The Purpose of the Workshop

The purpose of this workshop is twofold: (1) to highlight the importance of assessing and programming for generalization of social and communication skills, and (2) to provide a summary of how various evidence­based practice may be used to teach new skills and foster generalization.

The workshop will guide the audience to answer the following questions:

How can we help students with autism generalize social and communication skills across many settings? Does the literature on evidence­based practices give us any clues on how to plan for generalization? Assessment limitations:

Standardized assessments and curriculum­based assessments rarely inquire about the generalized conditions under which a student demonstrates a specific skill. Often, students are attributed to having social and communication skills that are rarely observed in multiple natural settings. To date, there is not consistency in the definition of “skill mastery”, “skill acquisition” or “skill generalization”.

Intervention Options:

There is a significant amount of research on evidence­based practices that support social and communication development. There is evidence that both Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and Naturalistic Instruction are beneficial. However, it is unclear if one practice is more beneficial to facilitate generalization. We propose that highly structured direct teaching is critically important for initial skill acquisition and less structured incidental teaching is critically important for skill generalization. We propose that interventionists use an instructional sequence that moves along a continuum from most structured to least structured activities, and use a specific data system to progress monitor both initial acquisition and “generalization” of social and communication skills. Through case studies, the audience will learn how to integrate multiple evidence­based practices in a systematic way to achieve this goal, and how to monitor the long path to skill generalization.