A comparison of social stories with and without video modeling in teaching how to respond to lures of strangers to individuals with autism

The purpose of the present study was to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of social stories with and without video modeling in teaching how to respond to lures of strangers to individuals with autism. An adapted alternating treatments design was used and four male students with ASD whose ages ranged from 10 to 13 participated in the study. Target skills for the students were how to avoid abduction by strangers and how to respond if a stranger knocked at the door. The findings of the study showed that both procedures were equally effective on promoting acquisition for three of the four students with ASD. Data indicated that there was no difference between the two procedures regarding maintenance effects. Mixed results were obtained regarding the efficiency parameters. Social Stories delivered alone seemed to be more efficient than social stories with video modeling in terms of all efficiency parameters for two students. The data showed that social stories with video modeling was more efficient than social stories alone in terms of all efficiency parameters for one student. For the remaining student social stories seemed to be more efficient than social stories with video modeling in terms of instructional time to criterion. Therefore, there was no considerable difference between the two procedures in terms of efficiency. Social validity findings showed that opinions of the participants and their mothers were positive overall. Keywords: Autism, Social stories, Video modeling, Safety skills