A Study Of Using Prt Motivation Packet To Improve Social Initiation For Children With Autism

Social initiation is recognized as one of the core deficit of children with autism spectrum disorders. Foreign research suggests that pivotal response training, which originated from the Applied Behavior Analysis has remarkable effects on improving the core deficit associated with this group. PRT motivational procedures targeting at six autism children’s social question-asking behavior was adopted in this study under Chinese cultural background. On one hand, the efficacy of PRT in increasing social question-asking for different function level autism children was assessed, on the other hand, the component of motivational procedures of PRT was analysized in order to systematic explore the core valid elements in this mode.Two experiments was design in this study, a multiple baseline design across subjects grouped with ABAB research design was used to assess the changes of capacity of social initiation, communication, adaptive behaviors and positive affect between pre-intervention and post-intervention in experiment 1. Results indicated that (1) target question-asking was acquired by the high and low function level subjects with different maintenance effect;(2) untarget question-asking also increased in high function group with maintenance effect while only few sprouted in the low function goup;(3) collateral gains in communication and adaptive behavior was revealed in both of the two groups;(4) positive affect was increased in both of the two groups. A multiple component research design was used to identify the different role of the four motivational variables of PRT played for the high and low function autism subjects during intervention in experiment 2. Results indicates that (1) the effect of PRT intervention was better than any component-removing intervention;(2) The effect of the four PRT variables to the low function subject differed from the high function subject;(3) The effect of the four PRT variables in target behavior acquisition changed with the learning proceeding. The theoretical and applied implications of PRT for children with autism are discussed.