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Behavioral consultation using an antecedent-behavior-consequence (A-B-C) narrative recording chart was implemented in this study with the mother of an adolescent child to examine whether improving ...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate why children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) tend to respond to tasks from their own perspective. The authors investigated the effects of explicitness of viewpoint on performance of spontaneous level 2 perspective-taking skills in six- to eight-year-old children with ASD. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted visual perspective-taking tasks with explicit and implicit instructions about the viewpoint to be used. Participants operated a toy car on a map while listening to the experimenter’s instructions. In the implicit condition, when the experimenter said “Turn right/left” at each intersection, the participants moved the car accordingly. Subsequently, in the explicit condition, the experimenter said “Look from the driver’s viewpoint and turn right/left” at each intersection. Findings In the implicit condition, the authors did not observe a clear developmental change in performance between six- and eight-year-old children in the ASD group. In contrast, performance in the ASD group improved under the explicit condition relative to that under the implicit condition. Originality/value The results suggest six- to eight-year-old children with ASD tend not to spontaneously use level 2 perspective-taking skills. Therefore, viewpoints should be explicitly instructed to children with ASD. In addition, it is also important to implement training to encourage spontaneous transitions from self-perspective to other-perspective under the implicit condition.

We examined factors leading to the successful implementation of behavioral programs by staff caring for children in a Japanese residential home. We used a multiple baseline design across 3 units of residential homes to assess the effects of 2 interventions. The primary dependent measures were staff verbal reports (e.g., descriptions of antecedents, behavior, and/or consequences) and action plans (instructions for intervention). Our results indicated that the use of quantitative data (e.g., frequency of behaviors) increased the percentage of time spent engaged in verbal reports, whereas the use of qualitative data (e.g., A-B-C recording) increased the percentage of action plans. In conclusion, our intervention promoted effective verbal reports and action plans. Using these tools, staff in residential housing facilities may be able to improve support delivered to children in Japanese residential programs. Future research may help to verify whether similar effects can be achieved in other settings.

Despite the need for evidence-based practice for children with autism spectrum disorders in the community, especially in areas with a scarcity of qualified experts and high financial costs, there is a lack of evidence concerning the potential benefits of early interventions which may be affordable in the real world (e.g. low-intensity behavioral or eclectic interventions). This study examined behavioral changes in preschool-aged children with autism spectrum disorders who received low-intensity behavioral interventions (a mean of 5.5 h per week) or non-behavioral eclectic interventions delivered in community settings in Japan across a 1-year period and compared outcomes between the groups. We assessed children’s developmental quotient, adaptive behavior, autism symptom/severity, and maternal stress and depression at baseline and after 1 year. Our results revealed that children receiving interventions in their communities showed improvement in language and social development. Further, the degree of improvement in children receiving low-intensity behavioral interventions was significantly greater than in children receiving non-behavioral eclectic interventions. The improvement was associated with the intensity of total, especially one-to-one interventions. On the other hand, there were no group differences in the degree of improvement in other outcome measures. Our results suggest that some preschool-aged children with autism spectrum disorder may benefit from low-intensity behavioral interventions for their language and social development. A greater intensity of one-to-one interventions was found to be associated with greater progress in language development and communication skills. The current study highlights the importance of implementing early interventions in the community, even at a low intensity.

Background There is a growing amount of single-case research literature on the benefits of tablet-mediated interventions for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). With the development of tablet-based computers, tablet-mediated interventions have been widely utilized for education and treatment purposes; however, the overall quality and evidence of this literature-base are unknown. Aims This article aims to present a quality review of the single-case experimental literature and aggregate results across studies involving the use of tablet-mediated interventions for individuals with ASD. Methods and procedures Using the Tau nonoverlap effect size measure, the authors extracted data from single-case experimental studies and calculated effect sizes differentiated by moderator variables. The moderator variables included the ages of participants, participants’ diagnoses, interventions, outcome measures, settings, and contexts. Outcomes and results Results indicate that tablet-mediated interventions for individuals with ASD have moderate to large effect sizes across the variables evaluated. The majority of research in this review used tablets for video modeling and augmentative and alternative communication. Conclusions and implications To promote the usability of tablet-mediated interventions for individuals with ASD, this review indicates that more single-case experimental studies should be conducted with this population in naturalistic home, community, and employment settings.