Comparing the effects of mother developed and delivered social stories and video modeling intervention on teaching children with Autism spectrum disorders

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) experience difficulties in social and cognitive skills. Therefore, providing systematic instruction at home and school by ensuring active participation of the parents are crucial. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether parents acquire developing and implementing the knowledge and skills of developing and implementing the intervention with social stories and video modeling and the effectiveness and efficiency of mother delivered social stories and video modeling on teaching social skills to children with ASD. Besides, the effects of both interventions on maintaining and generalizing the acquired skills were examined in the study. Last but not least, mothers' opinions about the social validity of the study was examined in the study. Three male students with ASD whose ages were between 7-11 years old participated to this study. An adapted alternating treatments design was used in the study. Prior to delivering intervention to children with ASD, a parental training was implemented by the researcher to teach how to develop and implement intervention with social stories and video modeling. Graphical analysis was conducted to see the differential effects of the interventions. Results show that mothers were able to develop social stories and video modeling with 100% accuracy and implemented intervention with high treatment integrity. Moreover the findings also show that mothers were able maintain and generalize the skills of developing social stories and video modeling over time and across behaviors. Effectiveness findings on participants learning show that both interventions were almost equally effective on teaching social skills to children with ASD and they were able to maintain and generalize the acquired skills taught by both interventions. Efficiency findings revealed that intervention with videomodeling was more efficient than social story intervention in terms of number of trials, number of errors and training times through criterion across three participants. There was a minimal difference in terms of number of intervention sessions in two participants and videomodeling was more efficient in one participant. Lastly, in terms of probe session time through criterion intervention with video modeling is more efficient in two participants and social story intervention is more efficient in the third participant. Mothers' opinions about the social validity of both interventions in study are positive in general. Keywords: Autism spectrum disorders, social skills, parent delivered intervention, social stories, video modeling