Using generic picture cues to promote verbal initiations during play

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Speech-Language Pathology

Background:

• Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often face challenges in social communication, impacting their ability to use language appropriately during play.
• Contextually appropriate language is crucial for social interaction and play skill development in children with ASD.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effectiveness of a social script-training intervention using generic picture cues.
• To assess the impact of this intervention on the number of contextually appropriate play statements made by children with ASD.
• To examine the generalization of these play statements to novel toy sets.

Main Methods:

• A nonconcurrent multiple-baseline-across-participants design with embedded reversal components was employed.
• The study involved three participants diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
• The intervention utilized generic picture cues to facilitate social script training during play.

Main Results:

• Participants showed an increase in contextually appropriate play statements during the training condition compared to baseline and no-cue conditions.
• Two out of three participants maintained a similar number of contextually appropriate play statements when presented with novel toy sets, indicating generalization.
• Analysis also included the types of play statements emitted by the participants.

Conclusions:

• Social script training with generic picture cues is an effective intervention for enhancing contextually appropriate play statements in children with ASD.
• The intervention demonstrates potential for generalization to new play contexts and materials.
• Findings support the use of visual cueing strategies to improve social communication skills in children with autism spectrum disorder.