The examination of the impact of the education program developed for improving mind reading skills in children with autism spectrum disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a disorder which shows itself with the life-long social interaction and communication problems, self-limited interests and repetitive behaviors. One of the theories explaining the observed differences and deficiencies in social and communication skills of autistic individuals is mind of theory. The aim of the study is to examine the effectiveness of "Mind Reading Skills Programme" on the first level mind-reading skills of the children who are in the group of Autism Spectrum Disorder. In the study, the polling phase, inter behavioral multiple polling model, which is one of the single subject research design multiple baseline research model, has been used. The study has been conducted with 3 children aged 3-5 who have been diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). The effectiveness of the implemented training program has been examined by pre- and post -test scores of the "Smarties", "Appearance-Reality" and "Perspective Taking" tests. With the aim of teaching "Appearance-Reality", "Perspective Taking" and "Unexpected Content" skills, five different materials, 15 separate studies in total, have been formed for each skill area prepared by the researcher. Research findings have shown that the implementation of the training program is effective. The first subject Ali- in the 26th session- the second one Ahmet- in the 24th session- and the third one Murat –in the 20th session- have gained the target skills. In the monitoring sessions, after 5, 10, 15 days when the trainings of all the subjects was terminated, it has been observed that all the subjects maintain the learned skills.