Teaching teamwork to adolescents with autism: the cooperative use of activity schedules

We used a multiple baseline design to assess the effects of prompting and reinforcement to teach three pairs of adolescents with autism to use photographic activity schedules to cooperatively complete a multistep vocational task (e.g., cleaning a kitchen). Baseline data indicated that despite being competent schedule followers, participants did not coordinate their actions to complete the schedule cooperatively. Following intervention, we observed an increase in cooperative schedule following. All prompts were removed and the schedule of reinforcement was thinned to the end of the task for two of the three pairs. We discuss the results in terms of increasing the collaborative work skills of individuals with autism.