Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder are likely to demonstrate social impairments that contribute to challenging behaviors and academic difficulties. As a result, the task of improving social communication skills is a critical component to any educational program for this population. Scripting provides an evidence-based and versatile option for…

Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit challenges with reading development. Evidence-based interventions and specialized approaches to reading instruction are currently being implemented across educational contexts for learners with ASD (Machalicek et al., 2008), yet there is limited understanding of how core ASD features may…

Scripts in written or auditory form have been used to teach conversational skills to individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but with the proliferation of handheld tablet devices the scope to combine these 2 formats has broadened. The aim of this pilot study was to investigate if a script-based intervention, presented on an iPad…

Script-fading procedures have been shown to be effective for teaching children with autism to initiate and participate in social interactions without vocal prompts from adults. In previous script and script-fading research, however, there has been no demonstration of a generalized repertoire of vocal interactions under the control of naturally…

A hallmark of Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is difficulties with social communication, and some learners with ASD experience additional deficits in expressive and/or receptive language that impair their ability to interact with others. However, a strength observed in many learners with ASD is responding to visual cues and structure. The use of…

We used a script-fading procedure to teach 3 children with autism to initiate bids for joint attention. We examined the effects of (a) scripts, (b) varied adult scripted responses, and (c) multiple-exemplar script training on promoting unscripted language during bids for joint attention. All 3 participants learned to initiate bids for joint…

In general terms a mand is a requesting response. Teaching children with autism to mand for information is often a difficult task given their language deficits. The present study examined a procedure consisting of contrived motivating operations, prompt fading, manded consequences, error correction, and a brief preference assessment for teaching…

A core deficit of people with autism is an inability to initiate and to sustain conversation with others. Several studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the script-fading procedure on improving the social initiation skills of people with autism. Nevertheless, there is little focus on responding to initiations. The purpose of this study was to…

Previous research suggests that vocational skills training for individuals with autism may increase the likelihood that they may be effectively employed. In the present study, a multiple-baseline-across-participants design was used to assess the effects of graduated guidance, scripts, and script fading to teach four adolescents with autism in a…

Video-modeling (VM) is a widely used instructional technique that has been applied to the education of children with developmental disabilities. One form of VM that lacks in-depth analysis is point-of-view video modeling (POVM). The current study investigated the use of POVM to teach three children diagnosed with autism to initiate and maintain a…

Script fading was used to teach three youths with autism to initiate and sustain verbal interactions under stimulus control consistent with the natural environment. The youths learned to engage in verbal interactions during simulated shopping trips and during visits to community stores. The effectiveness of script fading was examined using a…

Previous studies have shown that most individuals with autism do not show empathic responding. The present study is an attempt to teach such skills. Script-fading procedures have been used to teach other social-interaction skills, so they are applied here to teach empathic responding. This study included three adolescents with autism, two males…

Social script and visual cue use with students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) were examined. A multiple baseline design across activities with embedded withdrawal was used to measure student acquisition of verbal communication skills. Three children with ASD, two boys and one girl, were taught a series of scripts and were shown a "quiet"…

A study assessed the efficacy of a written script/cue card program to teach conversational speech skills to three verbal, literate boys (ages 8-10) with autism. Initially boys demonstrated low frequencies of conversational speech. Following intervention, all three quickly met the training criteria and maintained correct responding without cue…