Research On Characteristics And Intervention Of The Mand For Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder At Different Language Levels

Mands are often the first verbal behavior acquired by children and are critical for children with autism as a starting point for early language intervention.Children with autism often have difficulty initiating mand in an appropriate manner and are prone to a range of problem behaviors when their mands are not met.Currently,national and international researchers have not systematically organized the characteristics of mand skills for children with autism at different language levels.Existing research is still exploring assessment tools that are appropriate for children with autism’s mand skills.In practice,researchers have found that changing the general way of playing with toys and using a positive tone of voice can help improve the mand skills of children with autism.Therefore,the present study reconstructed an assessment tool for mand skills based on existing research and used it to assess in the presence/absence of initiation contexts to understand the characteristics of initiation and response mand skills of children with autism in the meaningful language and non-meaningful language groups.Based on the characteristics study,intervention strategies for children with autism were combined with stepwise mand skills for children with autism to individualize interventions for children with different language levels and provide recommendations for clinical interventions for mand skills.The main findings of the study are as follows:In this study,an assessment tool for preschool children with autism of different language levels was developed,taking into account the physical and mental developmental patterns of autistic children and the contextual creation of mand skills.The tool can assess the mand item skills of children with different levels of autism in both initiated(changing the general play of the toy and using positive tone of voice)and uninitiated(only showing the general play of the toy)contexts.The present study assessed initiation skills in the presence/absence of initiation contexts and found that the presence of initiation contexts helped to increase the scores of initiation skills and promote the development of initiation behaviors in both groups of children with autism.In both groups of children with autism,(i)the initiation skill scores were significantly higher in the presence than in the absence of initiation(P=0.000<0.01;P=0.011<0.05);(ii)the frequency of single behavior(e.g.,gestures)decreased and the frequency of double and triple behaviors increased in the presence of initiation;the type and frequency of initiation behaviors were significantly increased.In this study,when comparing the initiation skills of the two groups of children with autism in the same context,it was found that the former group had significantly better initiation skills and behaviors than the latter group of children with autism in the meaningful language group(i)the initiation skill scores were significantly higher than the latter group(P=0.001 <0.01;P=0.015 <0.05);(ii)the former group used more double(e.g.,gesture + vocalization)and triple(e.g.,eye + gesture + vocalization)behaviors than the latter group in terms of the type and proportion of initiation behaviors.used more double and triple behaviors than the latter,and the proportion of meaningful syllables and simple sentences was significantly higher than the latter.In this study,comparing the response skills of the two groups of children with autism in the initiation situation,we found that the former group had significantly better response skills than the latter group,(1)the response skill score was significantly higher than the latter group(P=0.009<0.01);(2)the percentage of correct responses was much higher in the former group than in the latter group,and the percentage of visual cues and non-response were lower in the former group than in the latter group.The results of this study showed that the stepwise mand intervention strategy improved autistic children’s mand skills,and after the intervention,the five autistic children’s mand initiation skill scores and the type and frequency of mand initiation behaviors increased significantly,and the correct rate of responding to mands increased significantly.The strategy included four components: experiencing,responding,initiating,and applying,and was based on the theoretical basis of the nearest developmental zone and hawk-frame teaching,and took into account the effects of different contexts on mand skills and the physical and mental developmental patterns of autistic children.