| Abstract: | Research has shown that children with autism often fail to attend to relevant stimuli in social situations, likely resulting in unsuccessful or absent social interactions. The purpose of this study was to teach children with autism to attend to stimuli with socially relevant features. Specifically, this study evaluated a teaching package including rules, modeling, role play, and specific feedback across multiple exemplars to teach children with autism to attend and respond to others’ bids for social attention (e.g., “Whoa!” or “Ouch!”). Three participants successfully learned to shift attention toward others and emit a response to gain more information in response to a socially relevant stimulus. Furthermore, generalization was observed across novel exemplars and people. |
