Teaching an Adolescent with Autism to Request Help Using an Interrupted Chain Procedure
Romina Tarquinio, Daniele Rizzi, Annalisa Galeone, Mathilde Bourdil, Mirko Massa, Vittorio Visco
Asking for help is a missing skill for many people with autism. Receiving assistance in situations in which they are unable to proceed independently could reduce the likelihood of emitting problem behaviours, improve social interaction and communicate their needs in a functional way. This paper, a replication of the study Teaching children with autism to request help with difficult tasks (Rodriguez et al., 2017), was conducted in order to teach asking for help to a 15-year-old boy with a diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorder, through the use of interrupted behavioural chains, in a semi-residential centre for adolescents and young adults with autism. The intervention was conducted out on 9 chains grouped into 3 sets, each of which consisted of 6 trials: 3 in which the participant was able to complete the chain (EO absent) and 3 in which the materials were manipulated to make a request for help necessary (EO present). The teaching procedure, consisting of prompting and fading via prompt delay, was evaluated through a concurrent multiple baseline design between sets. In 2 of the 3 sets, the request for help was taught through the use of a prompt delay procedure, in trials with EO present, while any undesirable generalization of the target response in trials with EO absent was evaluated. In the third set, an error correction procedure was sufficient to bring out the target response. In the second and third sets, procedural changes were made necessary to allow the acquisition of the request for help. The realization of this intervention allowed the participant to learn to ask for help in all 3 sets. Furthermore, the maintenance (set 1) and the generalization of the request in 2 naturalistic probes was evaluated, demonstrating the applied importance of the intervention results.
Keywords
Mand, Prompt delay, Fading, Interrupted chain, EO.
