Brief report: Increasing verbal greeting initiations for a student with autism via a Social Story™ intervention

Social Stories™ are a common intervention for addressing the social skills deficits individuals with autism often demonstrate. In this study, a Social Story intervention was used to increase acceptable verbal greeting initiations with an 11-year-old boy who had a diagnosis of high functioning autism. A withdrawal design with a comparison condition examined the frequency of acceptable verbal greeting initiations during 5 min observation periods. Results showed no acceptable verbal greeting initiations during both baseline conditions, increased frequency of acceptable verbal greeting initiations during both intervention conditions, and maintenance of intervention levels of behavior with visual supports during the comparison condition.