Sibling-mediated Social Communicative Intervention for Children with Autism Spect

描述(申请人提供)：缺乏社交能力是自闭症的主要特征。对于这些孩子来说，提高社交能力的干预措施很重要。大多数关注社交能力的干预措施都发生在课堂或诊所环境中。然而，患有自闭症的儿童大部分时间都在家里和社区环境中度过。在这些环境中的兄弟姐妹很可能能够支持或加强自闭症儿童的社交能力发展。很少有研究考察社会干预对自然环境中患有自闭症的兄弟姐妹的影响。因此，本项目的目的是开发并获得旨在改善自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)幼儿社交沟通技能的兄弟姐妹中介干预的有效性的初步证据。本研究试图回答以下问题：(1)兄弟姐妹中介的社会交往干预是否会改变自闭症儿童的社交行为？(2)如果干预导致自闭症儿童与其典型发育的兄弟姐妹之间的整体互动(例如，社会发起/反应、社交行为)增加，这种增加是否会在干预停止后保持一段特定的时间，并推广到户外环境？(3)干预的结果在社会上有效吗？本研究采用单一受试者多基线设计，以十二对兄弟姐妹为研究对象，评估干预对自闭症儿童社会交往行为的影响。单一受试者设计(即单一案例实验设计)被认为是开始测试干预措施并建立潜在有效性的适当策略，因为这种设计可以“产生证据，证明该技术对特定行为具有明确的、可复制的效果(Smith，ScaHill，Dawson，Guslee，Lord，Odom，Rogers，&Wagner，2007，p.356)”。将收集和分析定性(即访谈)和定量(即对社交沟通技能的观察和发展评估)数据。本研究将通过在家庭环境(即自然环境)中进行研究，调查自闭症儿童社会行为的变化，并记录是否存在兄弟姐妹中介干预的交叉情景泛化，来扩展先前的研究。最重要的是，这项研究的结果将被用于将干预技术汇编成手册，并推动更大规模的全面实施和评估(例如，随机临床试验)。 公共卫生相关性：该项目的目的是开发并获得兄弟姐妹干预的初步证据，该干预旨在改善患有自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)的幼儿的社会沟通技能。其目的是开发和测试针对确诊或疑似患有自闭症谱系障碍的幼儿的兄弟姐妹干预措施，以改善家庭和社区环境中的社会沟通结果。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Lacking social competence is a primary feature of autism. For those children, interventions to improve social competence are important. Most interventions focusing on social competence have occurred in classroom or clinic settings. Children with autism, however, spend the majority of their time in home and community environments. Siblings in those settings might well be able to support or enhance social communicative development of children with autism. Little research has examined social intervention involving siblings and their brother or sister with autism in a natural environment. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to develop and obtain preliminary evidence of the efficacy of a sibling-mediated intervention designed to improve the social communicational skills of young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The study seeks to answer the following questions (1) does a sibling-mediated social communicative intervention produce changes in social communicative behaviors of young children with ASD? (2) if the intervention produces an increase in overall interactions (e.g., social initiations/responses, social communicative behaviors) between children with ASD and their typically developing siblings, will this increase be maintained for a certain period of time once the intervention has stopped and generalize to a setting outside of home? (3) are the outcomes of the intervention socially valid? A single subject multiple-baseline design will be used with twelve sibling dyads to assess the efficacy of the intervention on the social communicative behaviors of children with ASD. Single subject design (i.e., single case experimental design) is regarded as an appropriate strategy to begin testing an intervention and establishing potential efficacy because this design can "yield evidence that the technique has a clear, replicable effect on a specific behavior (Smith, Scahill, Dawson, Guthrie, Lord, Odom, Rogers, & Wagner, 2007, p. 356)". Both qualitative (i.e., interview) and quantitative (i.e., observations and developmental evaluation on social communication skills) data will be collected and analyzed. This study will extend previous research by conducting the study at home settings (i.e., naturalistic environment), investigating the changes of social behaviors of children with ASD, and documenting the presence or absence of cross-setting generalization of sibling mediated intervention. Most importantly, the results of this study will be used to assemble intervention techniques into a manual and move forward for larger size full implementation and evaluation (e.g., randomized clinical trials). PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The purpose of this project is to develop and obtain preliminary evidence of the efficacy of a sibling-mediated intervention designed to improve the social communicational skills of young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The aim is to develop and test the sibling-mediated intervention for young children with confirmed or suspected autism spectrum disorders in terms of social communicative outcomes at home and community settings.