teaching interaction procedure

_______________________________________________________________________________

JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS 2012, 45, 281–298 NUMBER 2 (SUMMER 2012)

COMPARING THE TEACHING INTERACTION PROCEDURE TO SOCIAL STORIES FOR PEOPLE WITH AUTISM

JUSTIN B. LEAF, MISTY L. OPPENHEIM-LEAF, NIKKI A. CALL, JAN B. SHELDON, AND JAMES A. SHERMAN

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

AND

MITCHELL TAUBMAN, JOHN MCEACHIN, JAMISON DAYHARSH, AND RONALD LEAF AUTISM PARTNERSHIP

This study compared social stories and the teaching interaction procedure to teach social skills to 6 children and adolescents with an autism spectrum disorder. Researchers taught 18 social skills with social stories and 18 social skills with the teaching interaction procedure within a parallel treatment design. The teaching interaction procedure resulted in mastery of all 18 skills across the 6 participants. Social stories, in the same amount of teaching sessions, resulted in mastery of 4 of the 18 social skills across the 6 participants. Participants also displayed more generalization of social skills taught with the teaching interaction procedure to known adults and peers.

Key words: autism, behavioral skills training, social skills, social stories, teaching interaction

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are marked by qualitative impairments in social behavior (American Psychiatric Association, 2000) that can lead to failures in developing meaningful friendships (e.g., Bauminger & Kasari, 2000), depression (e.g., M. E. Stewart, Barnard, Pearson, Hasan, & O’Brien, 2006), and problems in school (e.g., Ladd, Birch, & Buhs, 1999). Over the past 30 years, a variety of methods have been implemented to teach social behaviors, including video modeling (e.g., Charlop-Christy, Le, & Freeman, 2000), discrete-trial teaching (e.g., Lovaas, 1981), pivotal response training (e.g., Stahmer, 1995),

Justin B. Leaf is now at Autism Partnership, Seal Beach, California, and Great Strides Behavioral Consulting, St. Louis, Missouri; Misty L. Oppenheim-Leaf is now at Behavior Therapy and Learning Center, Seal Beach, California.

This investigation was conducted to meet, in part, the requirements for the doctoral degree in Behavioral Psychology at the University of Kansas. We thank Sarah Johnson for her work throughout the project. We also thank Keith Miller, Nancy Brady, and Matthew Reese for their help on an earlier version of this study.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Justin B. Leaf, 200 Marina Drive, Seal Beach, California 90807 (e-mail: Jblautpar@aol.com).

doi: 10.1901/jaba.2012.45-281

behavioral skills training (e.g., K. K. Stewart, Carr, & LeBlanc, 2007), social stories (e.g., Gray & Garand, 1993), and the teaching interaction procedure (e.g., Leaf et al., 2009). Despite the numerous interventions to help people with ASD improve their social skills, relatively few studies have compared these different interventions.