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Teaching Reciprocal Imitation Skills to Young Children with Autism Using a Naturalistic Behavioral Approach: Effects on Language, Pretend Play, and Joint Attention

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Abstract

Children with autism exhibit significant deficits in imitation skills which impede the acquisition of more complex behaviors and socialization, and are thus an important focus of early intervention programs for children with autism. This study used a multiple-baseline design across five young children with autism to assess the benefit of a naturalistic behavioral technique for teaching object imitation. Participants increased their imitation skills and generalized these skills to novel environments. In addition, participants exhibited increases in other social-communicative behaviors, including language, pretend play, and joint attention. These results provide support for the effectiveness of a naturalistic behavioral intervention for teaching imitation and offer a new and potentially important treatment option for young children who exhibit deficits in social-communicative behaviors.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by a grant from the M.I.N.D. Institute Scholars Program and an APA Dissertation Research Award to the first author. We are grateful to the children and their families who participated in this research and the undergraduate research assistants who helped with this project. We also appreciate Mark Becker for his assistance with the statistical programming.

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  1. Brooke Ingersoll

    Present address: Department of Psychology, Lewis and Clark College, 0615 SW Palatine Hill Rd, Portland, Oregon, 97219, USA

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  1. University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Brooke Ingersoll & Laura Schreibman

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Correspondence to Brooke Ingersoll.

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Ingersoll, B., Schreibman, L. Teaching Reciprocal Imitation Skills to Young Children with Autism Using a Naturalistic Behavioral Approach: Effects on Language, Pretend Play, and Joint Attention. J Autism Dev Disord 36, 487–505 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-006-0089-y

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