A comparison of simultaneous prompting with and without video modeling in teaching children with autism

The purpose of the present study was to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of simultaneous prompting with and without video modeling in teaching food preparation skills to four students with autism. Maintenance and generalization effects of the procedures were compared as well. Also, social validity of the study was investigated by asking the parents and teachers of the students in the study.An adapted alternating treatments design was used to compare the procedures in the study. Four male students with autism whose ages ranged from 5 to 6 participated in the study. Target skills for the students were making a sandwich, preparing popcorn, fixing hot chocolate, making kool-aid, making a peanut butter sandwich, and fixing cereal.The findings of the study showed that both procedures were equally effective on promoting acquisition of the food preparation skills for the three students with autism. While the impact of the procedures was evident for the three children; this result were not replicated with one student. That is to say that the procedure in which simultaneous prompting combined with video modeling was effective in teaching for this student, simultaneous prompting alone did not resulted in criterion level. Data indicated that there was no difference between the two procedures regarding maintenance and generalization effects.Mixed results were obtained regarding the efficiency parameters. The simultaneous prompting procedure delivered alone was more efficient than simultaneous prompting with video modeling for one of the students in terms of all efficiency parameters. The data showed that simultaneous prompting with video modeling was more efficient than simultaneous prompting alone regarding the total number of the training sessions and instructional trials through criterion for three of the students. When the data were examined in terms of the percentage of incorrect responses, findings indicated that the simultaneous prompting with video modeling seemed to be more efficient than simultaneous prompting alone for two students. However, the simultaneous prompting procedure alone seemed to be more efficient for the other two students in terms of percentage of incorrect responses. Therefore, it can be concluded that there was no considerable difference between two procedures in terms of efficiency results. The opinions of the parents and the teachers of the students were positive overall. Based upon the findings, implications and recommendations of the study are discussed.Key words: Autism, effective teaching, simultaneous prompting, video modeling.