Acquisition and Generalization of Complex Empathetic Responses Among Children with Autism

Abstract

Empathy can be defined as a social interaction skill that consists of four components: (1) a statement voiced in the (2) appropriate intonation, accompanied by a (3) facial expression and (4) gesture that correspond to the affect of another individual. A multiple-baseline across response categories experimental design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of a prompt sequence (video modeling, in vivo modeling, manual and verbal prompting) and reinforcement to increase the frequency of complex empathetic responding by four children with autism. The number of complex empathetic responses increased systematically with the successive introduction of the treatment package. Additionally, generalization was demonstrated to untaught stimuli and a novel adult. Responding maintained over time to varying degrees for all participants. The data illustrate that children with autism can be taught using modeling, prompting, and reinforcement to discriminate between categories of affective stimuli and differentially respond with complex empathetic responses.

Evaluating the generality and social acceptability of early friendship skills

“…Given a statement or gesture of distress, the child approaches the individual and asks "Are you okay?" within 10 s (Argott et al, 2017;Hanley et al, 2007).…”

“…Empathizing with joy c . Given a statement and gesture of joy, the child engages in an appropriate vocal response (e.g., "Cool") within 5 s (Argott et al, 2017). across phases.…”

“…For opportunities to empathize with distress (e.g., crying and holding their knee after bumping it on the table) and joy (e.g., exclaiming "I built my tower!" while raising arms above head), the experimenter and peer presented different indices of distress or joy so the same index was not repeated during the same session (similar to Argott et al, 2017). For empathizing with distress, the experimenter and peer presented at least two opportunities where they were located more than 3 m away from the child to set the occasion for the child to stop playing and approach them.…”

Empathy Impairment in Individuals With Autism Spectrum Conditions From a Multidimensional Perspective: A Meta-Analysis

“…Possible reasons for this inconsistency are as follows. First, as the core component of interpersonal interactions (Bos and Stokes, 2018), empathy is multi-layered and multidimensional (Kern Koegel et al, 2016; Argott et al, 2017; Bos and Stokes, 2018; Foell et al, 2018; Khalil et al, 2018; Zhao et al, 2018), and the empathy deficit of individuals with ASCs may be component specific. Second, as an important social cognitive process (Chen and Liu, 2016), empathy is context dependent (Kennedy and Adolphs, 2012; Chen and Liu, 2016; Powell and Roberts, 2017), and the empathy impairment of autistic individuals may be regulated by other factors.…”

Teaching handwriting skills to children with intellectual disabilities using an adapted handwriting programme

“…For example, 'big line down, little line across, little line across' for a capital letter F. A modelling, or imitation, procedure is also used extensively in the HWT approach. Modelling is also well documented as an evidence-based teaching strategy for social skills (Argott, Townsend, and Poulson, 2017;Whitehill, Hersen, and Bellack, 1980) and functional life skills (Garcia, Dukes, Brady, Scott, and Wilson, 2016).…”