The Effects of Sibling-Monitoring to Increase Social Skills during Play in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Monitoring tactics with and without the use of token economies have been shown to be successful in increasing social interactions in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Few studies, however, have demonstrated the success of such tactics between children with ASD and their siblings into these types of interventions. In the current study, three sibling pairs, which consisted of a child with ASD and a typically developing sibling of close age, participated. The typically developing siblings were taught to implement an intervention during play situations in which he or she provided reinforcement to the sibling with ASD for engaging in targeted social skills. The results showed that two of the children with ASD increased emission of targeted social skills and successfully maintained those gains during a 2-week follow-up session. The results also showed that two of the typically developing siblings were able to correctly identify and reinforce their siblings' targeted social skills during natural play and a 2-week follow-up session.