Using generic picture cues to promote verbal initiations during play

Abstract

Children with autism spectrum disorder often demonstrate difficulty communicating with others, and this may affect the extent to which they can engage in contextually appropriate language during play. This study examined the effects of a social script-training intervention using generic picture cues on the number of contextually appropriate play statements for children with autism spectrum disorder. We also examined the extent to which responding generalized to novel toy sets and analyzed play statement types. A nonconcurrent multiple-baseline-across-participants design with embedded reversal components was used to evaluate the effects of the generic picture-cue intervention on contextually appropriate play statements. Three participants demonstrated a higher number of contextually appropriate play statements in the training condition as compared with the baseline and no-cue conditions. Further, two out of three participants continued to emit a similar number of contextually appropriate play statements when we introduced novel toy sets.