Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2003
Children with autism exhibit deficits in imitation skills both in structured settings and in natural contexts such as play with others. These deficits are a barrier to acquisition of new behaviors as well as socialization, and are thus an important focus of early intervention programs for children with autism. A substantial body of research indicates that naturalistic behavioral treatments are effective at teaching a variety of behaviors in children with autism. However, they have not yet been used to teach imitation skills. This study assessed the benefit of a newly designed naturalistic imitation training technique for young children with autism, which incorporates contingent imitation, linguistic mapping, explicit prompting, contingent reinforcement, and direct response-reinforcer relationships
A multiple baseline design was conducted across five children with autism who exhibited deficits in spontaneous imitation during play. Baseline consisted of free play with a therapist followed by 10 weeks of treatment. At the conclusion of treatment and at a one-month follow-up, the children participated in baseline and generalization sessions to assess the maintenance and generalization of the behaviors of interest. Dependent measures included structured and unstructured behavioral measures of imitation, language, joint attention, and play. This design allowed for a detailed analysis of individual responsiveness to the treatment for both the targeted behaviors (object imitation) and non-targeted behaviors (e.g., language)
All of the participants exhibited increases in their imitation ability in the treatment setting and on a structured imitation assessment. Four of the five participants maintained these gains after the removal of treatment and generalized their imitative behavior to novel materials, a therapist, and a setting. One-month follow-up data indicated that all children maintained higher than baseline rates of imitation. In addition, participants also exhibited increases in other social-communicative behaviors, including language, play, and joint attention. These results provide support for the effectiveness of a naturalistic behavioral intervention at addressing imitative behavior and offer a new and potentially important treatment option for young children who exhibit deficits in social-communicative behaviors
