978-1572305441

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the procedure is the same. Eventually these component skills are put together,
and the child now has to group pictures together that tell a story
in a logical sequence. That helps sequencing in general, an important
basic skill in learning to use language.
This strategy is ideally suited for children with autism but has
never been evaluated on children with AS. Indeed, young children with
AS seem more suited for a treatment program that focuses on social
skills and on attempts to promote a wider range of interests. This second
approach is more naturalistic and involves promoting social and
communication skills in general by targeting the key deficits of children
with ASD. The focus here is on basic social skills in eye contact, sharing
an activity with an adult or another child, indicating wants and needs
with respect to food or snacks, indicating pleasure in response to an
adult activity such as tickling or singing a song. Interactions are often
initiated by the child rather than by an adult; the adult tries to synchronize
his or her responses to the child’s behavior. These interventions
usually start at home or with an adult therapist too but soon move into
community settings such as school or day care, with appropriate professional
and clinical supports. By encouraging children with ASD to be in
such settings, the opportunity to learn more appropriate social and
communication skills from other children is also enhanced.
The idea is that children with ASD have excellent visual learning
skills. But instead of using these skills to mimic TV characters or Disney
videos, they might use them to learn from other children. The teacher
or therapist sets up situations that encourage or facilitate social interaction
and communication between the child with ASD and a typical
child. For example, a child with ASD may learn to take turns in a favorite
game with a therapist. Then, once that is mastered, the therapist may
introduce another typical child so that the three of them take turns.
Then the therapist backs off and provides support for the child with
ASD to play with the typical child and intervenes only when necessary.
However, sometimes the behavior of the child with ASD is just too challenging
to begin in this fashion, and some children need some form of
discrete trial training to begin. Working on attention span, compliance,
and understanding simple language can make it much easier to implement
these more “naturalistic” interventions.
Both of these forms of ABA have been shown to be effective compared
to doing nothing. However, we do not know which type of ABA is
more effective and efficient—that is, gives the most gain for the least
cost—because the different forms have never been compared directly.