Extending conversations among adolescent peers with autism.
Item
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Title
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Extending conversations among adolescent peers with autism.
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Identifier
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AAI9707120
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identifier
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9707120
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Creator
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Kyparissos, Nicholas.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Claire L. Poulson
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Date
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1996
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Behavioral | Psychology, Clinical | Education, Special | Psychology, Social
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Abstract
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Adolescents with autism with sufficient verbal skills to permit engagement in conversations do not typically engage in extended verbal exchanges with their autistic peers. The purpose of the present study was to teach conversational skills to adolescents with autism to enable them to participate in extended conversations with their peers. A relatively simple and effective way to engage in and to extend conversations is to ask questions about what the others have just said. All five participants were adolescents between 15 and 20 years of age diagnosed with autism. Three served as target students, two as confederate peers. The experimenter constructed 36 scripts, each providing the target student 10 opportunities to ask wh-questions embedded in the ongoing conversation. The confederate peers initiated and conducted four scripted conversations per session with each target student. A within-subject multiple-baseline design across three types of wh-questions was used to assess whether the systematic introduction and later fading of scripted exchanges would increase the number of verbal exchanges of the target students. Training occured across three types of wh-questions (what, where, when) and generalization was assessed across three different types of wh-questions (who, why, how). All target students reached a level of 10 scripted exchanges per conversation. With fading, unscripted exchanges gradually increased while scripted exchanges decreased. All target students showed substantial generalization to the untrained scripts. In two social validation measures teachers of youth with autism and graduate students naive to autism unanimously rated all three target students as greatly improved or improved in their conversational skills after the intervention.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
