A progressive model for teaching children with autism to follow gaze shift

Abstract

Gunby, Rapp, Bottoni, Marchese and Wu (2017) taught three children with autism spectrum disorder to follow an instructor's gaze shift to select a specific item; however, Gunby et al. used different types of prompts with each participant. To address this limitation, we used a progressive training model for increasing gaze shift for three children with autism spectrum disorder. Results show that each participant learned to follow an adult's shift in gaze to make a correct selection. In addition, two participants displayed the skill in response to a parent's gaze shift and with only social consequences; however, the third participant required verbal instruction and tangible reinforcement to demonstrate the skill outside of training sessions.