Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) commonly show difficulty in communication and daily functional skills. The use of scripts may help establish these repertoires. Scripts may be visual, textual or auditory. Background/Objectives: The purpose was to assess the efficacy of script fading in establishing the vocal verbal emission of sentences under the control of pictures representing actions from four behavioral sequences (e.g., brushing teeth) in three children with ASD. The effects of the intervention on the emergence of related non-verbal repertoires were evaluated. During intervention, the scripts were textual for one participant, who initially read the sentences. For the remaining two participants, scripts were dictated to them so they could repeat. Across sessions, scripts were faded out by gradually omitting the words from the sentences. Results: Script fading produced the emission of sentences solely in the presence of pictures. Related non-verbal actions emerged. Conclusions: The data were interpreted as indicating correspondence between verbal and non-verbal behavior or “say-do” correspondence. The data were discussed in the sense that script fading, for some learners, may improve communication with sentences that impact the acquisition of related non-verbal behavioral chains. Limitations of the research were discussed.
Keywords:
Subject: Social Sciences - Behavior Sciences
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.
Preprints.org is a free preprint server supported by MDPI in Basel, Switzerland.