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Background: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show difficulty in comprehension and production of the deictic verbs "come/go." Objective: To examine whether introducing conditions related to daily conversations into training would improve the use of deictic verbs. Methods: Six Japanese children with ASD participated. We set up multiple scenes where the questioner presented the sentence using "come/go" with/without deictic gestures, and children with ASD replied with "come/go." The conditions such as spatial relations between the two parties (face-to-face or side-by-side) and presentations of the gestures (moving one's arm toward or away from the body or moving one's upper body forward/backward) were introduced. Results: The appropriate use of deictic verbs during training and in daily life situations among children with ASD increased. Conclusions: Training children with ASD to look in the direction indicated by the questioner and to synchronize their bodies with the questioner's movements promotes their acquisition of deictic verbs.

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 ...

Perspective transformations that are considered the first step of visual level 2 perspective-taking (VPT2) are not highly active in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We investigated training procedures to develop moving to another viewpoint and observing the view from the new viewpoint to establish VPT2. The Face Rotation Task was used as the VPT2 task in three experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the time-lag from the removal of sample stimuli to the presentation of comparison stimuli. The results of the two experiments indicated that VPT2 was established when participants move from the self-viewpoint to the other’s viewpoint while continuing to look at the stimuli, and when participants move from the other’s viewpoint to the self-viewpoint while maintaining a representation from the other’s viewpoint. Eye movements during the presentation of sample stimuli were analyzed in Experiment 3. The results indicated the possibility of mutually looking at elements of a spatial array while performing the perspective transformation.

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.

We examined the effects of constructed-response matching-to-sample (CRMTS) training on the generalization of reading and spelling skills in three Japanese children with autism using a series of overlapping-syllable word sets. We taught them to construct printed words to match printed words, spoken words, and pictures through the CRMTS procedure. Hence, two participants performed well in the generalized reading and spelling skills of untrained words. However, one participant did not meet the criterion for the generalization of reading and spelling skills. We taught her to break a word into each syllable as a differential observing response to the sample in the task. The modified CRMTS procedure enabled her to establish the generalized reading and spelling skills. This study discusses that the procedure and the modified CRMTS with differential observing response are effective for acquisition of generalized reading and spelling skills in children with autism.

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.

Children with autism often have difficulty in generative learning. Effective training program for generative learning in these children is needed. In this study, we examined the effectiveness of matrix training for generative spelling in two children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Matrix training is a procedure in which stimuli used in teaching are arranged with overlapping within-syllable units. After training with a Constructed-Response Matching to Sample (CRMTS) with matrix training, both participants' generative spelling was assessed by CRMTS test using untrained combinations of characters. In this study, spoken syllables (auditory stimuli) are presented as the sample stimulus, and written characters (visual stimuli) are presented as comparison stimuli in CRMTS task. As a result, both participants showed generative spelling by matrix training, however, one of the two participants needed additional matrix training. The results discussed the effectiveness of matrix training as a procedure for teaching generative spelling and some issues to be conducted in applying this procedure for Japanese reading and spelling in children with ASD. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In early training for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), matching-to-sample (MTS) tasks are widely used to teach various language and cognitive skills. However, some problems in conducting MTS training for children with developmental disabilities are also recognized. In this study, we examined the effectiveness of stimulus pairing training as a training procedure for children with ASDs. Two boys with ASDs participated in this study. During the stimulus pairing training trial, the children observed only two corresponding stimuli were paired successively. Participant's learning as a result of stimulus pairing training was assessed by MTS tests, which were conducted immediately after the training. In this study, visual–visual and visual–auditory stimulus relations were trained in stimulus pairing training. As a result, both participants could learn the stimulus relations by stimulus pairing training. The effectiveness and efficiency of the pairing training procedure and some issues to be considered in applying this procedure for children with ASDs are discussed.