Teaching Persistence in Social Initiation Bids to Children with Autism Through a Portable Video Modeling Intervention (PVMI)

Abstract

Children with autism make and accept fewer social initiations and spend more time playing alone than with typical peers. Interventions that capitalize on technology have proven to be particularly successful in improving social initiation skills because they increase motivation, maintenance, and generalization of new social behaviors (Nikopoulos and Keenan 2004). In the present study, a portable video modeling intervention (PVMI) was used to teach persistence in social initiations to four children with autism. Two hypotheses were tested: 1) that children with autism would effectively learn persistence in social initiations to peers by using a PVMI and that this skill would 2) generalize and be maintained across people and settings. Results indicated that children with autism could learn persistence in social initiations through the PVMI. These behavior changes generalized across peers and settings and were maintained after a 1-month follow-up period. Results are discussed in terms of the effectiveness of interventions such as a PVMI as potential learning tools for children with autism.