Graduation Date

Spring 2022

Document Type

Project

Program

Master of Arts degree with a major in Psychology, option Academic Research

Committee Chair Name

Christopher Walmsley

Committee Chair Affiliation

HSU Faculty or Staff

Second Committee Member Name

Mary Clare Bonow

Second Committee Member Affiliation

Community Member or Outside Professional

Keywords

Conversation skills, Behavioral skills training, Video modeling, Telehealth

Subject Categories

Psychology

Abstract

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and the current state of education children have limited access to an environment where they can practice conversational skills with people outside of their immediate family. Traditionally, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have a difficult time independently learning these skills, even in an environment that is ripe with social interaction(Grosberg & Charlop, 2017). The current study sought to use behavioral skills training, modeling, and prompting to teach the skills of responding to questions, asking questions, and changing the topic to one learner with ASD over telehealth. The study was conducted over three phases. The first phase consisted of collecting baseline data on the target behaviors. The second was a one-on-one intervention, where the researcher used video modeling to teach the participant one or more of the target conversational skills, they then practiced having conversation and the researcher provided the learner with feedback. These lessons continued, intervening on one behavior at a time until a stable rate of responding was observed. The final phase consisted of a maintenance and generalization assessment. Maintenance sessions occurred two weeks following the intervention and four generalization probes occurred in the home with different people during the final week of the intervention. The results indicate that these conversation skills can be learned through the one-on-one telehealth intervention, can maintain over time, and generalize to real world setting.

Citation Style

APA

Share

 
COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.