This was brought to the attention of with many of the researchers in my selected research articles. The research articles/studies that are a basis of this paper are ones that take on improving the social skills of autistic children. There have been countless studies testing different techniques of teaching autistic children to become more sociable. Also included is how the improvement on only a few target behaviors can be generalized and help modify other non-target behaviors. The thesis of my paper is that there are techniques that improve the social skills of autistic children and may also provide a generalization effect on other non-target behaviors. .
Discussion:.
Difficulty relating socially to other people is a hallmark of autism (Ozonoff & Miller, 1995). Students with autism exhibit a multitude of asocial and antisocial characteristic says Kamps (1992). She defines appropriate social behavior as a positive or at least functional interaction with others. .
Over the past twenty years, a variety of treatment approaches have been used in an attempt to help the social skills deficits of people with autism (Ozonoff & Miller, 1995). Among these techniques, one goal of these programs is the development of social and communicative skills of children with autism through their participation in social interactions with their typical peers (Hwang & Hughes, 2000).
"While earlier efforts in the field involved adult-directed teaching, with demonstrated effectiveness, the field has moved to more careful attention to the ecology of children's social interactions in natural settings with a shift of focus to social interactions with peers,"" (Rogers, 2000). Rogers (2000) goes on to say that, "many current approaches, such as incidental teaching and various peer mediates strategies, are built upon careful shaping of the child behaviors by typical peers embedded in child-initiated interactions within natural contexts-.