Although neurotypical children often spend the majority of their time engaged in play activities, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can present with substantial delays in the development of play skills, requiring intensive intervention. Although targets for language and basic learning skills are often selected based on the development…

Activity schedules consist of a series of visual discriminative stimuli, arranged in booklets or binders, which function as prompts for appropriate behavior. Although activity schedules are useful, their typical presentation in binders can be cumbersome and stigmatizing, placing additional barriers for independence and inclusion. The purpose of…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often display deficits in social and conversational skills. One method used to improve social deficits includes video modeling. When targeting conversational skills, few studies have included individuals with ASD as conversational partners. We evaluated the effects of video modeling on commenting…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often lack symbolic play skills. Attribution of pretend properties (APP) is a type of symbolic play in which a child tacts pretend properties of an object (e.g., smelling a toy flower and saying, "It smells like a rose!"). Three Chinese boys (5-6 years of age) with ASD served as participants.…

Young children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder often require systematic teaching to learn new skills, and caregivers can teach their children by embedding learning opportunities in a play-based context. However, researchers have not evaluated procedures to train caregivers how to implement a combination of strategies designed to establish…

The literature suggests that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) educated in inclusive settings generally do not interact with typically developing classmates during social activities. This study assessed whether an intervention package consisting of interest-based structured play activities involving adult instruction, modeling, and…

We observed three children with autism spectrum disorder during structured play dates in which play partners displayed interest or disinterest in the toys with which they were playing. We then taught subjects to identify play partners' preferences and to make appropriate toy offers using a multiple-exemplar training package consisting of rules,…

The present study was designed to teach conversational speech using text-message prompts to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in home play settings with siblings and peers. A multiple baseline design across children was used. Children learned conversational speech through the text-message prompts, and the behavior generalized across…

Adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and no intellectual disabilities were taught to increase the social play skills of children with ASD as part of a vocational training program. Participants included 3 adults, aged 21 to 27 years, and 6 children with ASD. Probes conducted throughout the study evaluated whether play skills training affected…