Sibling-mediated Social Communicative Intervention for Children with Autism Spect

描述（由申请人提供）：缺乏社交能力是自闭症的主要特征。对这些儿童来说，提高社会能力的干预措施很重要。大多数以社会能力为重点的干预措施都发生在课堂或诊所环境中。然而，自闭症儿童大部分时间都在家庭和社区环境中度过。在这些环境中进行sibery很可能能够支持或增强自闭症儿童的社会交往发展。很少有研究探讨社会干预涉及兄弟姐妹和他们的兄弟或姐妹与自闭症在自然环境中。因此，本项目的目的是开发和获得兄弟姐妹介导的干预，旨在提高自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的幼儿的社会沟通技能的有效性的初步证据。本研究试图回答以下问题：（1）以兄弟姐妹为中介的社会交往干预是否能改变ASD幼儿的社会交往行为？(2)如果干预产生总体交互的增加（例如，社会启动/反应，社会交往行为）与自闭症儿童和他们的兄弟姐妹之间的典型发展，将这种增加保持了一段时间，一旦干预已经停止，并推广到家庭以外的设置？(3)干预的结果是否具有社会有效性？将采用单受试者多基线设计，采用12对兄弟姐妹，评估干预对ASD儿童社会交往行为的有效性。单一受试者设计（即，单一病例实验设计）被认为是开始测试干预和建立潜在功效的适当策略，因为该设计可以“产生该技术对特定行为具有明确的、可复制的效果的证据（Smith，Scahill，Dawson，古特里，Lord，Odom，Rogers，&瓦格纳，2007，第356页）"。两者都是定性的（即，访谈）和定量（即，社会沟通技巧的观察及发展评估）的资料。这项研究将通过在家庭环境中进行研究来扩展以前的研究（即，自然环境），调查ASD儿童的社会行为变化，并记录兄弟姐妹介导干预的跨环境泛化的存在与否。最重要的是，这项研究的结果将用于将干预技术汇编成一本手册，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和获得兄弟姐妹介导的干预措施的有效性的初步证据，旨在提高自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的幼儿的社会沟通技能。其目的是开发和测试的兄弟姐妹介导的干预幼儿确诊或疑似自闭症谱系障碍的社会交往成果在家庭和社区设置。

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.