A research review by Michelle Rodgers (CUNY Queens College)
Authors: MacDonald, R., Green, G., Mansfield, R., Geckeler, A., Gardenier, N., Anderson, J., Holcomb, W., & Sanchez, J.
Title: Stereotypy in young children with autism and typically developing children
Purpose of this study: The purpose of this study was to compare motor and vocal stereotypy in 2-,3-, and 4-year old children with autism and typically developing children within the same age group.
Participants: A total of 60 children participated. 30 were diagnosed with autism or PDD-NOS and 30 were considered typical. Each group was broken up into three subgroups, 2-, 3-, and 4-year olds, each with ten children.
Settings: The setting was a small testing room at the New England Center for Children. The testing room had books and toys as well as a table and chairs.
Target behaviors: The behaviors that were measured were vocal and motor stereotypy across the two groups of children and across the 3 age groups. Some examples of vocal stereotypy were: non-contextual giggling, vocalizing non-recognizable words and echolalia. Examples of motor stereotypy were rocking, hand flapping, tapping objects, more than 2 times in a row, spinning, and finger flicking.
Procedure: Children were administered portions of the NECC Early Core Skills Assessment battery. These components covered motor and vocal imitation, matching, receptive and expressive communication, as well as instruction-following skills. Only a ten minute sample of the assessment was used, even though each student was given the entire battery. During the play portion, children were told to play with the toys but were allowed to move around the whole testing room. They were not prompted after the first directions were given. During the structured component, the children were administered tests for motor imitation, vocal imitation, and social questions. If the children engaged in stereotypy, it was not redirected.
Results: The results indicated that as the age increased for children with PDD-NOS, the mean percent duration of total stereotypy (vocal and motor) increased from 12% at 2-years old, 23% at 3 years old, and 39% at 4 years old. For typically developing children, the mean percent duration of total stereotypy decreased from 5% at 2 years old, to 3% at 3 years old and 2% at 4 years old. The children with PDD-NOS started with a higher mean percent duration than the typically developing students. The 4 year-olds with PDD-NOS displayed even higher rates of stereotypy than the 2 year-olds.
Implications: The study has several implications.
First, the optimal age for early intervention would be 2 years-old or earlier. Stereotypy is still relatively low at 2, that there may be more opportunities to teach appropriate behavior without having to compete with stereotypy.
Also, the fact that the four-year olds had higher rates of stereotypy implies that more should be done to limit the practice of stereotypy so that there is not much of a reinforcement history attached to these behaviors.
The types of stereotypy observed in the typical children and the children with PDD-NOS were also of interest. Children with autism tended to emit repetitive noises or non-contextual phrases, while rarely making eye contact. Typically developing children emitted contextually appropriate and identifiable words as well as made eye contact.
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Sunday, March 23, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Stereotypy and social engagement : A Research Review
A research review by Jennifer Morrison (CUNY Queens College).
Lee, S., Odom, S. L., & Loftin, R. (2007). Social engagement with peers and stereotypic behavior of children with autism. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 9, 67 – 79.
Purpose of the study: The relationship of social engagement and stereotypic behavior for children with autism, which looked particularly at if increased social engagement lead to decreases in stereotypic behavior, and finally if these decreases in stereotypic behavior generalized to other settings as well.
Participants: Three children diagnosed with autism who engaged in frequent stereotypic behavior. One child was 8 yrs old with moderate to severe mental retardation with severe delays in language. Another child was 7 hrs old and engaged in a variety of oral/vocal stereotypy and also would sometimes engage in self-injurious behavior to himself and also others. The other boy was 9 years old and had profound mental retardation; he could follow simple verbal commands from adults but also engaged in high rates of vocal and motor stereotypy. In addition to the three children diagnosed with autism, 12 (6 pairs) of children without disabilities also participated that were all in third grade classes that the three children that were part of the study were in.
Setting: The study was done in a 5 m x 4 play area in a special education classroom. The area was full of several different types of toys and objects that they could play with.
Target Behaviors: The behaviors that were mainly investigated in this study were initiations with a peer or stereotypic behavior. Initiations were defined as: any vocal/verbal or gestural behavior that a participant/peer directed to another peer and that was not preceded by a socially oriented behavior from that peer. Stereotypic behavior was defined as topographically similar behaviors that were performed repetitively. These could include vocal which was when children used their mouths or made vocalizations or sounds. Motor stereotypy was defined as when children used any of their body parts except vocal with or without manipulating objects (eg finger flipping, wiggling fingers, banging head, etc.)
Procedure: The experimenters used a multiple baseline across participants and settings. After the first participant had a stable baseline they then introduced the intervention. Once the first participant reached stable responding at intervention, the intervention was introduced for the next participant…so on. During the baseline phase, each child with autism was observed during structured free-play sessions with two peer buddies. No instructions were given to the children and lasted approximately 5 minutes. During training, the trainer taught the peers four social skills concepts (sharing, suggesting play ideas, assisting and being affectionate). Each training session began with a verbal discussion of the importance of playing with friends and/or a review of the previous day’s play. After this the teacher then modeled appropriate and inappropriate responses. In the using skills intervention the teacher reminded the peer to use the skills they had learned to get their friend to play, and the peer then got the child to play in a structured activity with them.
Results: During baseline, all three children did not engage with peers at all in any type of play situation. After training with peers, the mean percentage of social engagement increased to, 69%, 79%, and 56% for all three children. More importantly, this behavior continued through the reimplementation period and also for generalization probe trials with children that were not trained. At the same time, the participants’ engagement was more variable during the generalization phase which took place at snack time. In addition, during baseline each of these three children engaged in high rates of stereotypy (87%, 47%, and 89% respectively). When the peer initiation intervention was introduced not only was social engagement increased but stereotypic behavior decreased in all three children.
Implications: This study had several important findings. First of all, this study showed the importance of training peers to initiate social interactions with children diagnosed with autism. This study also showed how effective training with a peer model can be in increasing social engagement in a child on the autism spectrum. More importantly it was shown that the percent of self-stimulatory behavior also decreased with all three children. This shows the importance of the relationship of a set of social skills in comparison to stereotypy. If a child is engaging in a conversation with another child, this gives them less of a chance to engage in vocal stereotypy especially. The other really nice thing about this study is that it was naturally done with peers of the children that were their age. This study ultimately shows the importance of peer modeling and peer assistance to children diagnosed on the autism spectrum. One thing I thought was a strong point of this study was that they also used children that were not on the high functioning side of the autism spectrum. When reading studies similar to this, there are a lot of studies done with children with Asperger’s or related symptomology, but very little with children with more severe deficits and higher rates of self-stimulatory behavior.
Lee, S., Odom, S. L., & Loftin, R. (2007). Social engagement with peers and stereotypic behavior of children with autism. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 9, 67 – 79.
Purpose of the study: The relationship of social engagement and stereotypic behavior for children with autism, which looked particularly at if increased social engagement lead to decreases in stereotypic behavior, and finally if these decreases in stereotypic behavior generalized to other settings as well.
Participants: Three children diagnosed with autism who engaged in frequent stereotypic behavior. One child was 8 yrs old with moderate to severe mental retardation with severe delays in language. Another child was 7 hrs old and engaged in a variety of oral/vocal stereotypy and also would sometimes engage in self-injurious behavior to himself and also others. The other boy was 9 years old and had profound mental retardation; he could follow simple verbal commands from adults but also engaged in high rates of vocal and motor stereotypy. In addition to the three children diagnosed with autism, 12 (6 pairs) of children without disabilities also participated that were all in third grade classes that the three children that were part of the study were in.
Setting: The study was done in a 5 m x 4 play area in a special education classroom. The area was full of several different types of toys and objects that they could play with.
Target Behaviors: The behaviors that were mainly investigated in this study were initiations with a peer or stereotypic behavior. Initiations were defined as: any vocal/verbal or gestural behavior that a participant/peer directed to another peer and that was not preceded by a socially oriented behavior from that peer. Stereotypic behavior was defined as topographically similar behaviors that were performed repetitively. These could include vocal which was when children used their mouths or made vocalizations or sounds. Motor stereotypy was defined as when children used any of their body parts except vocal with or without manipulating objects (eg finger flipping, wiggling fingers, banging head, etc.)
Procedure: The experimenters used a multiple baseline across participants and settings. After the first participant had a stable baseline they then introduced the intervention. Once the first participant reached stable responding at intervention, the intervention was introduced for the next participant…so on. During the baseline phase, each child with autism was observed during structured free-play sessions with two peer buddies. No instructions were given to the children and lasted approximately 5 minutes. During training, the trainer taught the peers four social skills concepts (sharing, suggesting play ideas, assisting and being affectionate). Each training session began with a verbal discussion of the importance of playing with friends and/or a review of the previous day’s play. After this the teacher then modeled appropriate and inappropriate responses. In the using skills intervention the teacher reminded the peer to use the skills they had learned to get their friend to play, and the peer then got the child to play in a structured activity with them.
Results: During baseline, all three children did not engage with peers at all in any type of play situation. After training with peers, the mean percentage of social engagement increased to, 69%, 79%, and 56% for all three children. More importantly, this behavior continued through the reimplementation period and also for generalization probe trials with children that were not trained. At the same time, the participants’ engagement was more variable during the generalization phase which took place at snack time. In addition, during baseline each of these three children engaged in high rates of stereotypy (87%, 47%, and 89% respectively). When the peer initiation intervention was introduced not only was social engagement increased but stereotypic behavior decreased in all three children.
Implications: This study had several important findings. First of all, this study showed the importance of training peers to initiate social interactions with children diagnosed with autism. This study also showed how effective training with a peer model can be in increasing social engagement in a child on the autism spectrum. More importantly it was shown that the percent of self-stimulatory behavior also decreased with all three children. This shows the importance of the relationship of a set of social skills in comparison to stereotypy. If a child is engaging in a conversation with another child, this gives them less of a chance to engage in vocal stereotypy especially. The other really nice thing about this study is that it was naturally done with peers of the children that were their age. This study ultimately shows the importance of peer modeling and peer assistance to children diagnosed on the autism spectrum. One thing I thought was a strong point of this study was that they also used children that were not on the high functioning side of the autism spectrum. When reading studies similar to this, there are a lot of studies done with children with Asperger’s or related symptomology, but very little with children with more severe deficits and higher rates of self-stimulatory behavior.
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