Jaime Ann DeQuinzio, Dawn Buffington Townsend, Peter Sturmey, & Claire L. Poulson. (2007)
Generalized imitation of facial models by children with autism.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis,
40, 755-759.
Imitation is an essential skill in the acquisition of language and communication
skills. An initial phase in teaching young children with autism to engage in
appropriate affective responding may be to teach the imitation of facial models.
Using a multiple baseline across participants design, imitation training (consisting
of modeling, prompting, differential reinforcement, and error correction) was
introduced successively across 3 participants. Low and inconsistent rates of
imitation of facial models were observed in baseline. All of the participants learned
to imitate some of the facial models presented during imitation training, but only
2 of the 3 participants demonstrated generalized responding across stimuli.
DESCRIPTORS: generalized imitation, affect, autism