The use of joint activity schedules as a means to promote independent peer engagements through play activities in preschoolers with autism and social difficulties: a systematic replication

Abstract

Children with autism and social difficulties often lack the ability to engage independently with each other. Investigations have shown that the use of visual cues may increase social engagement, decrease the dependency on teachers or caregivers, increase independent engagement in complex chain behaviors, enhance generalization, and facilitate maintenance of the newly acquired skills (Mc Clannahan & Karntz, 1999). Activity schedules have been used in the past to teach complex chains of behaviors, but they have not been extensively used with the intention to teach social skills. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the use of a joint activity schedule would result in higher levels of peer engagement for pairs of three preschoolers during interactive activities. A reversal design was used to assess the effects of the joint activity schedule on peer engagement. This study was a systematic replication of an experiment conducted by Betz, Higbee and Reagon (2008). The data suggest that a joint activity schedule can be a helpful tool to increase peer engagement and game play not only among children with autism, as demonstrated by the original study, but also among children with social/behavioral difficulties.