Jessica A. Schrandt, Dawn Buffington Townsend, & Claire L. Poulson.
Teaching empathy skills to children with autism.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis,
42, 17-32.
The purpose of this study was to teach empathetic responding
to 4 children with autism. Instructors presented vignettes with
dolls and puppets demonstrating various types of affect and used
prompt delay, modeling, manual prompts, behavioral rehearsals, and
reinforcement to teach participants to perform empathy responses.
Increases in empathetic responding occurred systematically with the
introduction of treatment across all participants and response categories.
Furthermore, responding generalized from training to nontraining probe
stimuli for all participants. Generalization occurred from dolls and
puppets to actual people in a nontraining setting for 2 participants.
Generalization was observed initially to the nontraining people and setting
for the other participants, but responding subsequently decreased to baseline
levels. Introduction of treatment in this setting produced rapid acquisition of
target skills.
DESCRIPTORS: autism, empathy, social skills