Abstract:
As diagnostic numbers within autism continue to climb, educators, parents, and other professionals have an ever-increasing demand to provide effective, empirically based programs that foster improvements across a variety of developmental, academic, and social needs. This study incorporated use of a Peer Mediated Instruction and Intervention (PMII) program within a general education classroom setting aimed to increase the number of initiations and conversational turn-takes in students with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis. The study also aimed to determine if such a program changed and enhanced the perspective of general education students towards their peers with disabilities. In addition, documenting if carryover of skills by participants towards those students not part of the PMII program occurred following treatment withdrawal. This study took place over a 7-week period within the third grade science/social studies classroom, and included one week for baseline data collection, 5- weeks of treatment, and a final week of maintenance data collections following withdrawal of treatment. Visual analysis across all phases for data sets of initiations and conversational turns revealed differences in level between the baseline and the treatment phases. The highest variability across the treatment phase indicated widely varying data points, combining to exhibit a “noneffect.”
Keywords: PMII; Social Skills; Autism; Speech Therapy;