Objectives: Participants were expected to learn persistence in making social initiations to typical peers using a PVMI on the iTouch, generalize this skill across settings and peers, and maintain this skill after one month.
Methods: Four children with autism aged 6-9 participated in the study. Our goal was to teach each child to: a) make initiations to a neurotypcial peer to play, and b) persist in making initiations to other peers even if their first few attempts are declined. Each child watched three video clips of four student “actors” on an iTouch. One student actor represented the child’s role, and the other three students represented the roles of the neurotypical peers. In Clip #1, the actor made a play bid which was immediately accepted by her peer to play. In Clip #2, the peer declined the actor’s play bid. The actor then had to walk across the playground to ask another peer before her play bid was accepted. In Clip #3, the actor’s play bid was declined by both the first and second peers, so the actor needed to persist by approaching a third peer to make an initiation to play (and was subsequently reinforced). After viewing all the clips, it was the child’s turn. The experimenter said, “Now it’s time to play, pick a toy and choose a friend to play with.” The child was then escorted to the outdoor play setting with at least three neurotypical peers. Sometimes the first peer said “yes”, other times the child had to approach two or three peers before getting his bid accepted. Criterion was reached once s/he was able to persist in asking up to three friends to play over two consecutive sessions (this equates to 100% accuracy). If the child was not successful, s/he received the PVMI with the iTouch again. To assess generalization, the child was given one session (three trials), to persist in asking up to three friends to play in an indoor community recreation room and at a community park with unfamiliar peers. Maintenance of the target behavior was assessed after one month.
Results: All four children learned persistence in social initiations using the PVMI iTouch protocol. Moreover, these children showed generalized persistence in at least one untrained setting and maintained the persistence at one-month follow-up.
Conclusions: Our study demonstrates the effectiveness of devices like the iTouch as potential intervention tools for children with autism. Clearly, the ability to persist in social initiations is significant not only for the immediate social benefits for a child with autism, but also increases opportunities for friendships, responsiveness to others, and successful adult relationships in the future.