Effects of Video Self-Modeling on Spontaneous Requesting in Children with Autism

Abstract

Video self-modeling (VSM) is a promising intervention to teach new skills and improve the use of existing skills in young children with autism. VSM includes observation and imitation of one's self on videotape that records specific desirable child behaviors. The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of VSM for training young children with autism to make spontaneous requests in school settings. Four young children with autism participated. Experimental control was demonstrated using a multiple-baseline design across participants. Introduction of VSM led to a large increase in requesting behavior in all four children. VSM was effective in causing an increase in spontaneous requesting in young children with autism. 30Children with autism typically display great difficulties in social-communication skills. Poor social communication includes poor social interactions, such as poor imitation skills, and lack of eye contact, and lack of responsiveness to people. Limited or nonexistent communication skills, such as lack of turn-taking skills, problems with speech/ communication, or poor or limited use of appropriate gestures, are also common. Finally, delayed, restricted, repetitive, or unusual responses to stimuli, such as squealing, screaming, and hand flapping are also common examples of poor social-communication skills.This lack of social-communication skills is also a significant problem for children with autism. Socialcommunication skills rely on reciprocal interactions between individuals. Lack of skill in this area often deters other children from beginning or maintaining communication and friendships with children with autism. Socialcommunication skills are an important aspect of human interaction. Deficits in eye contact, turn taking, gestures, or verbalizations that indicate requesting objects or action/ attention, responding to others, or protesting (e.g., refusing to participate in an interaction) are perceived by peers, family members, and other individuals as significant limitations in the social-communicative behavior. Difficulties in social-communicative behaviors can impede children's reciprocal social-communicative interactions (Wetherby, 1998) and subsequent ability to function in society (McGee & Daly, 1999). A lack of skills in this area in children with autism thus is a major concern. An important goal in interventions for children with autism is to increase socialcommunicative development in order to decrease the problems often produced by social avoidance or awkwardness.One effective strategy to aide young children in learning social-communication skills is to model the behavior of individuals around them. This process has been termed observational learning or modeling (Bandura, 1977). Video self-modeling (VSM) is a form of modeling that allows individuals to observe their own behavior. In other words, the person acts as his or her own model (Hosford, 1981). VSM research, which was based on the Bandura modeling research, began approximately 30 years ago, and about 150 studies of VSM ...

The Efficacy of a Video Self-Modeling Intervention on Peer Social Initiation Skills of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)

“…In addition, maintenance results for Tuan and Sam showed that they both maintained the target behaviors over time. Sam's maintenance of all target behaviors in both the training setting and the classroom supports previous findings (Nikopoulos & Keenan, 2007;Wert & Neisworth, 2003) that video self-modeling is an effective intervention for maintaining acquired skills over time. Tuan maintained manding for preferred toy items to the peer and greeting behavior in both settings; however, he did not maintain toy comments or activity comments.…”

“…However, several studies failed to improve social initiation skills of all participants (Buggey, 2012;Wert & Neisworth, 2003). Researchers noted that these participants did not attend to the video and participants in Buggey (2012) study were three years old.…”

“…In regard to generalization of the skills, participants of two studies generalized social initiation skills across peers and settings (Wert & Neisworth, 2003;Kabashi & Epstein, 2017). Given that participants in Wert and Neisworth's study (2003) watched a video at home and they displayed target skills at the school, generalization effects across settings in addition to across people were reported.…”

“…The majority of these explored social initiation skills by measuring physical and vocal initiations to peers (Bellini et Kabashi & Epstein, 2017). One study (Buggey, 2005), however, targeted unsolicited verbalizations to both peers and staff and another (Wert & Neisworth, 2003) investigated spontaneous requesting to adults.…”

Teaching Social Initiation Skills to Young Children with Autism Using Video Self-Modeling with Video Feedback

“…Video feedback consists of the participant watching non-edited videos of their own behavior and then co-reviewing it with the teacher to evaluate the behavior(s) and to discuss adjustments in future performance [11]. Video self-modeling has proven effective for spontaneous requesting of young children with autism to adults [12], vocal and physical initiations with typical peers in a playground setting [13] and social engagement [14] and social initiations with typical peers [15,16]. Evidence for video feedback has also been demonstrated to improve social initiations of children with autism.…”