The Effect of Discrete Trial Training on Acquisition of Social Communication Skills of Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effect of discrete-trial training(DTT) on acquisition of social communicative skills of young children with autism spectrum disorder(ASD). Three participants with previous diagnoses of ASD were selected from the list of children receiving services from the Korean Institute for Applied Behavior Analysis(KIABA). Target behaviors of this study were: (1) pointing the item related when the usage or function is explained, (2) imitating vowels “Ah, Eoh, Oh, Uh, Eeh”, (3) telling a story after arranging a set of three serial picture cards in order. Three DTT programs were developed to teach each of the target behaviors combined with fading, shaping, and chaining procedures, and examined the effectiveness through the experimental intervention. The multiple-probe design across training steps was conducted with 3 participants receiving discrete trial training. The results showed that all the three discrete trial training programs were highly effective to teach social communication skills to children with ASD.