Thesis (B.A. Hons.))--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Psychology, 1978.

Increasing numbers of students with disabilities are being educated in mainstream schools in response to the international call for inclusive education. This study investigated the experiences of five students diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) with challenging behaviours, and those who support them including parents, class and special education teachers, regarding inclusive education. At the time of the study, the five male students were all of upper primary school age, and attended state schools in Queensland, Australia. A multi-case study approach was adopted to better understand the nature of inclusion through engaging participants (students, class teacher, parents, and special education teachers) in "conversations" about their experiences of inclusion by means of semi-structured interviews. Students diagnosed ASD with challenging behaviours are testing the educational system as it attempts to meet their individual needs. This is due in part to the complexities associated with the disability of ASD and the many factors required in the delivery of effective inclusive practices. The findings of the research study reflected significant variance in the nature of inclusive schooling practices. Data collected from participants involved in a focus group interview and five case studies were used to describe the practices adopted in response to meeting the educational needs of individual students diagnosed ASD with challenging behaviours. There were five key findings that emerged from this study. Firstly, a range of practices was identified for each of the five children and these were posited along the continuum from inclusive to exclusive. Secondly, inclusive practices emerged from a number of interconnected processes including training, stakeholder collaboration, a school culture pursuing educational inclusion, and educator efficacy. Thirdly, educator efficacy appears to be the most crucial factor in the establishment of inclusive practices, without it exclusionary practices prevail. Fourthly, legislation and policy alone do not appear to result in the universal adoption of inclusive educational practices. Lastly, while all students had unique educational programming needs, this thesis found that there is a need for an appropriate model to be implemented to offer a foundation level of appropriate education interventions. Implications for educational policy and practice relevant to inclusive education were discussed.

The aim of this project is to establish whether video self-modelling is an effective approach in decreasing fear responses in children with ASD aged between five and 15 years. Participants were recruited through a flyer that was posted in the Autism New Zealand Canterbury newsletter and the Autism in New Zealand Facebook page. Three participants were recruited who were aged 11 to 12 years, who had a diagnosis of ASD and a fear. This study used a single-case, AB design replicated across the three participants. The participants met with the researcher to discuss their fear and what the study entailed. Baseline measures were obtained and videos were created to depict the child being in the same environment as their feared stimulus. Participants watched their videos for a two-week period then the baseline measures were repeated twice. Two out of the three participants showed some increase in steps achieved in their fear hierarchies. A similar pattern was found with the self-reported levels of fear, one participant showed a decrease in post intervention measure, the second showed variability and the third was not able to complete the intervention due to his extreme fear response. The results of this study reflect some of the literature, which suggest that while VSM can result in rapid learning, in some cases it may not work for all participants and individual differences can account for some of this variability. Due to the variation in the results and individual differences, it is difficult to determine the effects of this type of intervention for fears and phobias in children with ASD. Limitations on this study included the number of participants, as a larger number would have provided more data on the effects of VSM for different participants and the amount of time that was allocated to complete the study.

The passive perception of irrelevant actions can facilitate or interfere with the execution of one’s own actions, known as ‘automatic imitation’ (AI). For example, when one is pressing down on a button, reaction times (RTs) are faster when observing a finger depression (compatible action) and slower whilst observing a finger lift (incompatible action). This phenomenon has been attributed to the mirror neuron system and is thought to represent a laboratory model of spontaneous motor mimicry which facilitates social interactions. AI is typically reduced or absent when the observed movement is produced by a non-human agent. However, previous findings suggest that the magnitude of this ‘human bias’ can be modulated by top-down factors, such as attention and prior instructions regarding whether the movement was produced by a human or non-human agent. This thesis aimed to further examine the role of attention and belief regarding stimulus agency in automatic imitation. Participants were required to perform a pre-specified key press or release response to a diffuse yellow flash go signal. This response was either compatible or incompatible with the finger or object movement, which was presented simultaneously. AI was measured by subtracting compatible from incompatible RTs to calculate the compatibility effect. Experiments 1a, 1b, 2 and 7 focused on exploring the role of attention in AI. Experiment 1a revealed that the human bias is dependent on when the go signal occurs. AI was greater for the finger stimulus relative to the object stimulus when the go signal occurred during the movement, but not after the movement. It is suggested that attention to the movement is reduced when the go signal occurs after the movement. This implies that the human bias in AI is dependent on attention being directed towards the movement. Experiments 1b and 2 indicated that AI was removed if a visual dual task was added, but that AI remained and was greater when an auditory dual task was added. This indicates that AI was removed when the visual dual task competed for cognitive resources with action observation. The facilitation of AI when an auditory dual task was added suggests that the additional cognitive load may have occupied cognitive resources required for the inhibition of imitation. These findings highlight that AI is susceptible to attentional load, implying that AI is not a strongly automatic process. Experiment 7 explored whether the spread of attention modulates the magnitude of AI by comparing a ‘diffuse’ go signal to a ‘focused’ go signal which directed attention to the stimulus movement. Significantly larger AI effects were produced for the group of participants who saw the focused flash first, indicating that focusing attention on the spatial location of the movement increased AI, and furthermore that initially observing the focused flash ‘trained’ participants to pay attention to the stimulus movement in the diffuse flash condition. Experiments 3 and 4 examined why AI effects for non-human stimuli are more likely to be significant when trials are presented in separate blocks (e.g. human vs. non-human stimuli) as opposed to randomly mixed trials. It was hypothesised that this pattern of previous results could be due to less attention being drawn to stimulus differences when stimuli are presented separately as opposed to mixed with a block of trials. However, in both experiments, AI effects were present for the object stimulus in the group of participants who observed the block of finger trials first. This suggests that the prior observation of the finger movement caused a carry-over of human agency to the object stimulus. Experiments 5, 6, 8 and 9 directly explored the role of belief regarding stimulus agency in AI by instructing participants that the object movement was generated by a human finger movement. Experiments 5, 6 and 8 provided preliminary evidence that AI is affected by belief instructions, but the effects were weak or confounded by spatial stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) effects (i.e. compatibility effects based on spatial correspondence of the stimulus and response location). Experiment 9 was designed to differentiate imitative compatibility from SRC effects, thus providing a pure measure of imitative compatibility. Imitative compatibility was present for the object stimulus after the belief manipulation. This demonstrates that a human belief regarding stimulus agency of the object modulated imitative compatibility effects due to the top-down knowledge that the movement was human generated, and not due to increased attention and SRC effects. The presented work has provided multiple lines of evidence which demonstrate that so-called ‘automatic’ imitation effects are strongly susceptible to top-down influences, including attention and belief regarding stimulus agency. The current work could be used to evaluate top-down modulation of imitation in autistic populations, as it has been proposed that top-down modulation of the automatic imitation pathway may be atypical in autism.

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Difficulty with many aspects of social interactions is a defining characteristic of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Video modeling (VM) has successfully improved a range of social skills for individuals with ASD in previous studies, but most often with simple social skills with young children. The current study used VMs scripted and recorded by peers to improve complex conversation and social gestures by a young adult with ASD. A multiple-probe, across-behaviors design found mixed evidence of experimental control of VM on the social behaviors of the individual with ASD, although all behaviors increased from baseline and generalized to other settings and conversants. Peer comparison data from the conversation partner suggest that the VM may have served to prompt the peer to guide and extend conversation as modeled in the VMs and that the conversation skills of the peer also improved throughout the study. Implications of the important role peers may play to enhance VM and improve social skills are explored.

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are a group of developmental neuropsychiatric disorders that can be highly variable in their intensity and in the types of symptoms displayed among different people. Over the years, various intervention techniques using computer-based or computer-assisted therapy have been explored to help individuals with autism in their everyday lives. This paper proposes a set of special guidelines for developing computer-based interactive applications and games to assist learning in children on the autism spectrum. The guidelines proposed here form a framework of interactive and adaptive techniques to be employed in designing computer games and applications that can be used to enhance various aspects of learning and development in children on the autism spectrum. These guidelines are based on the learning activities and other peer-to-peer interactions employed by teachers in inclusive classrooms which help optimize learning in a classroom environment. Other sources of game design considerations include prior research on the limitations encountered by children with ASD in motion, sensory perception, communication and cognition. Prior and ongoing research relating to their abilities in these particular areas are also utilized in this study as important factors in designing the interactive applications and games. Lastly, studies regarding the use of technologies and augmented communication devices are used to help outline the necessary mediums of delivery for the games and applications. The guidelines created in this study are introduced to parents and researchers of children on the autism spectrum through a survey in which these participants are asked to evaluate the techniques and technologies presented in this paper. This research delves into one of the new areas of exploration that have a huge potential in intervention techniques for children with ASD. It is expected that the outlines developed here will offer helpful insight into design and development for future efforts and advancements in gaming technologies for children with ASD.

The main objective of this research work is to provide a tool to prevent the severe hearing sensitivity to patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience. The key element in our work is to identify commonalities between sounds that bother an ASD patient, and implement a procedure using PC or smartphone as platform - based on those results, which will lead to the prevention of “bothersome” sounds for the ASD sufferer and later to desensitization. To do so, we implemented a first application that evaluates the auditory sound sensitivity of a person, and a second application that determines those factors that are related to hearing sensitivity of the patient, suggest sounds in the preventive process, and proposes use of appropriate sounds in the desensitization process. While the current implementation is a prototype, we are determined to pursue the development at professional level and implemented as very user friendly application, which we hope will become a popular tool used by medical personnel and ASD patients for the identification of an individual’s specific sound sensitivities and his/her desensitization to those sounds.

A deficit currently exists in teacher preparation programs for teaching students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) using evidence-based practices, specifically in the area of Applied Behavior Analysis. As communication deficits are a primary characteristic associated with the diagnosis of ASD teaching communication skills is a common educational goal for students with ASD, and this skill needs to be addressed in teacher education. Mand training is one evidence-based practice applied to teach independent requesting skills to students with ASD. In this study, four teachers serving students with characteristics of ASD in the classroom participated in a multiple-probe across-participants study evaluating the extent to which online training videos prepare teachers in mand training procedures for students with ASD. Concurrent with teacher participants, changes in rates of student mands were evaluated for four students receiving instruction in a multiple probe design. Data analysis consisted of visual analysis of graphically displayed results and calculation of effect sizes. Results indicate that the Online Training Videos (OTV) were not effective as a standalone intervention for preparation of teachers to teach mands, however three student participants showed improved student outcomes.