Abstract
Taking the visual perspective of another individual is an important skill in social communication, and is termed visual perspective-taking (VPT). Individuals with autism spectrum disorder who have deficits in social interaction show relatively lower performance on VPT tasks than individuals who achieve age-appropriate developmental milestones. Thus, researchers have attempted to teach VPT skills and component behaviors to children with autism spectrum disorder. This pilot study evaluated the effects of a technology-based intervention on VPT skills in an adolescent male with autism spectrum disorder and moderate intellectual disabilities using a multiple-probe across behaviors design. Using a training package composed of multi-view videos with feedback, we trained the participant to discriminate whether the experimenter could see an object and to discriminate between right or left based on the experimenter’s perspective. The results showed that the percentage of correct responses for each skill increased when the training package was applied. Furthermore, we observed generalization of VPT skills to untrained lab and natural environment settings. We discussed (1) the possibility that training multiple exemplars resulted in broad generalization, (2) the effectiveness of experiencing other people’s perspectives when training VPT skills, and (3) the potential and limitations of multi-view videos for clinical application based on the results of the social validity questionnaire.
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Data Availability
The data supporting the findings of this study can be obtained from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.
Notes
In more recent studies, there are attempts to analyze perspective-taking in Relational Frame Theory involving deictic relations (see Kavanagh et al., 2020).
Many studies have reported no differences between typical and autistic individuals for VPT tasks, so it remains unclear whether children with ASD have a VPT deficit (see Pearson et al., 2013).
The process of putting an item in a basket may seem curious. In a preliminary assessment related to Visibility-VPT, the participant passed the object on the side without a shield (visible to the experimenter) when the facing experimenter said, “Pass me X.” Although this behavior may appear to have accounted for the experimenter’s perspective, it may have also been that the object was easier to pass because there was no obstacle (i.e., a shield). The basket task was added to exclude the possibility that easy responses would be favored.
All references to individuals for each instruction used the person’s real name, not a pronoun, title, or other type of reference.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Ayane Suzuki for her valuable assistance with materials creation, data collection, and data analysis.
Funding
This study was supported by JST CREST Grant Number JPMJCR14E2 and JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP20K14071.
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All procedures performed in this study involving human participant were in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Keio University (the approval number is 190040001).
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Tsukamoto, M., Wei, Y., Nagai, T. et al. Promoting Visual Perspective-taking Skills in an Adolescent with Autism and Intellectual Disabilities Using Multi-View Videos: A Pilot Case Study. J Dev Phys Disabil 36, 87–110 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10882-023-09897-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10882-023-09897-6