Promoting social interactions between peers and autistic child in an environment of inclusion

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine if this procedure would increase the frequency of social interactions between autistic child and their peers without developmental problems, by using a modeling procedure live. Participants were a boy (H), aged 5 years old, diagnosed with ASD from the 3-year and three colleagues from the same class (two girls and one boy), aged 4 and 5 years, no diagnosis of special need. The intervention occurred at the fifth session of observation and was the presentation of a model of interaction between the experimenter (E) and H. This occurred in the presence of all his colleagues during two activities (activity involving toys and presentation of tasks to colleagues). The results showed that after watching the interaction between E and H, three colleagues increased the rate of social initiations directed at H and this increased the rate of responses to these initiations compared to Baseline. The rate of interactions with colleagues and H continued to grow, reaching a stabilized around 3 initiations / minute and remained at that level until the end of the procedure for observation at the twelfth session.