Educating Children with Autism (2001) / Chapter Skim
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6 Social Development
6 Social Development
Pages 66-81
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From page 66... ...
DEVELOPMENTAL CONSTRUCTS AND THEORY Kanner's (1943) original description of autism suggested that the basis for the social difficulties lay in a child's inability to form emotional ties ("affective contact")
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From page 67... ...
This control system, present in both caregivers and infants across the mammalian species, served to maintain proximity between infants and caregivers and thus to assure infant protection and care. Bowlby's theoretical work was carried forward in empirical studies begun by Mary Ainsworth and colleagues, and it represents one of the most thoroughly studied areas of infant development at the present time.
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From page 68... ...
Behavioral interventions use the powerful tools of operant learning to treat symptoms of autistic spectrum disorders. This approach, which treated each social symptom as a separate entity, was radically different from the social relations traditions described above, which considered all social behavior as emanating from one main construct.
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From page 69... ...
Peer interactions, and indeed social interactions in general, are characterized by low rates of both initiation and response. This is most marked in interactions for the purpose of sharing experiences and establishing joint foci of attention (Peterson and Haralick, 1977; Mundy et al., 1990; Mundy et al., 1987; Wetherby and Prutting, 1984; Corona et al., 1998~.
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From page 70... ...
Mundy and Sigman's work on social responses demonstrated that continuing pleasurable social routines and regulating others' behavior to get needs met were types of social interaction that were not specifically affected by autism (Mundy et al., 1987~. In a related vein, Dawson and colleagues demonstrated that an adult's imitation of a child's behavior elicited social orienting, interest, and engagement (Dawson and Galpert, 1990~.
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From page 71... ...
Communication is the means by which people carry out social interactions. The wide-ranging differences in communication skills that exist in young children with autism and their intervention needs are described in Chapter 5.
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From page 72... ...
Some advantages of the behavioral research on changing social skills have been the measurement of generalization and maintenance, attention to antecedents and consequences, and use of systematic strategies to teach complex skills by breaking them down into smaller, teachable parts. Some drawbacks of traditional behavioral approaches are the complex data systems that often accompany them and that may impede their use in more typical settings, as well as the lack of training in their use that most staff members on early childhood teams receive.
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From page 73... ...
These strategies have demonstrated very effective outcomes, but are not as well known to the public, either parents or professionals. Developing Goals for Improving Social Interactions with Adults For very young children with autism, goals for specific social behaviors or skills identified in interactions with adults may focus on early prelinguistic behaviors, such as joint attention, turn taking, imitation, responding by gaze to adult initiations, and initiating social interactions with adults (Wetherby and Prizant,1993~.
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From page 74... ...
Since communication is the process by which people carry out social relationships, children's communication skills and needs are part and parcel of social development. Developing social goals and objectives needs to be carried out hand in hand with developing communication goals and objectives.
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From page 75... ...
Observational, sociometric, rating scale, and criterion-referenced measures are available for identifying specific goals and instructional target behaviors for young children with autism (a detailed review of these assessment instruments and techniques can be found in Odom and Munson, 1996~. This assessment information, when paired with information about priorities, parents' concerns, the skills needed to be successful in the current educational settings, and the skills needed to be successful in the next educational setting, can serve as a basis for selecting functional social outcomes that practitioners could select for young children with autism.
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From page 76... ...
This pattern reflects the commitment of most social interventions to changing behaviors in "real world" contexts, but also the difficulties of doing so with random assignments and independent evaluators blind to the intervention. Intervention Techniques Child-Parent Social Interactions Dawson and Galpert (1990)
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From page 77... ...
The power of these strategies to increase social interactions of young children with autism, as well as generalization and maintenance, has been demonstrated in inclusive preschool classes, as reported in many published multiple baseline studies (Hoyson et al., 1984; Strain et al., 1979; Strain et al., 1977; Goldstein et al., 1992~. Variables found to be important in maintenance and generalization include the characteristics of the peers, methods of prompting and reinforcing peers, fading reinforcers, ages of children, and characteristics of the setting, as well as the use of multiple peer trainers (Brady et al., 1987; Sainato et al., 1992~.
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From page 78... ...
Though they can be highly effective, peer-mediation approaches are complex to deliver, requiring socially skilled typical peers and precise adult control during training of peers, managing and fading reinforcement, and monitoring ongoing child interaction data. However, these approaches are manualized (Danko et al., 1998)
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From page 79... ...
Both approaches, as well as the pivotal response training approach described by Koegel and colleagues (1999) , carefully apply behavioral teaching paradigms embedded in natural or naturalistic social interactions to focus on social development as the primary thrust of the intervention.
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From page 80... ...
Convergence of Techniques Across Program Models The various techniques used can be grouped into three strategies: (1) adult-directed instruction of specific components of social interactions, like eye contact, response to gestures, toy play skills, and social speech; (2)
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From page 81... ...
Given the popularity of developmentally appropriate practices in other areas of early childhood education, empirical studies of the effectiveness of developmentally based interventions are needed to determine their relative value for stimulating growth in young children with autistic spectrum disorders. Comparative studies of varying approaches are needed.
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