Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Date of Graduation
Spring 2018
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science (BS)
Department
Department of Psychology
Advisor(s)
Trevor Stokes
Marsha Longerbeam
Kenneth E. Barron
Abstract
A central characteristic of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are deficits in social communication, which often results in delays in speech and impairments in communication skills. The present study’s goal was to improve the quality of conversation skills in a seven-year-old diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. A multiple baseline across behaviors probe design was used to teach the child appropriate responses in three conversation scripts about topics of interest of the child. The scripts were presented to the child using visual text prompts that were faded out using a front-to-back fading procedure. When the child met criteria for reinforcement, it was provided in the form of access to the preferred activity that was the topic of the conversation script. The interventions for the scripts were presented sequentially, with a new script being introduced once the previous one had been mastered. The results showed that the textual and the front-to-back fading procedure are effective for increasing the frequency of responding with appropriate content in a conversation, which in turn improves the quality of conversation skills.
Recommended Citation
Knox, Emily, "Improving conversation skills in a child with autism spectrum disorder using textual prompts and front-to-back fading" (2018). Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019. 559.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/honors201019/559
