The Effects of Peer Mentoring on Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The purpose of this study was to determine the characteristics of students with autism and their peer mentors that may contribute to the success of peer-mediated intervention strategies. Target students and peer mentors were matched based on skill level, age, and preferences; the students participated in a variety of activities throughout a week-long day camp. Peer mentors were taught how to interact with students, and behavior technicians were trained to facilitate these interactions. A qualitative case study was designed to determine patterns across the matched pairs. Findings indicate that peer mentor characteristics and the characteristics of the target student contribute to the success of a peer mentoring intervention

A Comparison Of Adult- And Peer-Mediated Intervention For Autism: A Case Study

This study examined the response of a young child with autism to two play-based intervention conditions: adult-mediated and peer-mediated. The client was five years old, demonstrated moderate-to-severe autism, and exhibited developmental functioning between the 14 to 34 month level. The peer-mediated condition, based on a modified Integrated Play Group approach, utilized a typically developing peer who was three years of age. The study utilized an ABAB alternating treatment design to compare the impact of the adult- and peer-mediated interventions. Results from the current study suggest that the adult-mediated intervention resulted in increased engagement and more sophisticated social-communicative behaviors than the peer-mediated approach for the child with autism. Clinical implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed

Atypical modulation of face-elicited saccades in autism spectrum disorder in a double-step saccade paradigm

Atypical development of face processing is a major characteristic in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which could be due to atypical interactions between subcortical and cortical face processing. The current study investigated the saccade planning towards faces in ASD. Seventeen children with ASD and 17 typically developing (TD) children observed a pair of upright or inverted face configurations flashed sequentially in two different spatial positions. The reactive saccades of participants were recorded by eye-tracking. The results did not provide evidence of overall impairment of subcortical route in ASD, However, the upright, but not the inverted, face configuration modulated the frequency of vector sum saccades (an index of subcortical control) in TD, but not in ASD. The current results suggest that children with ASD do not have overall impairment of the subcortical route, but the subcortical route may not be specialized to face processing

Teaching complex social skills to children with autism; advances of video modeling

Although there has been a corresponding explosion of literature regarding the treatment of the social deficits in autism, the establishment of more complex social behaviors still remains a challenge. Video modeling appears as one approach to have the potential to successfully address this challenge. Following an introduction to modeling that constitutes the basis of this procedure, the current paper explores those video modeling studies that have targeted the promotion of complex social skills. It is suggested that this approach could be an effective addition to peer-mediated treatment procedures, especially for children with autism who cannot always be in environments where peers are present. Further, the likely success of video modeling seems to be dependent upon the prior elimination of behaviors that interfere with the development of imitation skills

Hard to "tune in": neural mechanisms of live face-to-face interaction with high-functioning autistic spectrum disorder

Persons with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are known to have difficulty in eye contact (EC). This may make it difficult for their partners during face to face communication with them. To elucidate the neural substrates of live inter-subject interaction of ASD patients and normal subjects, we conducted hyper-scanning functional MRI with 21 subjects with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) paired with typically-developed (normal) subjects, and with 19 pairs of normal subjects as a control. Baseline EC was maintained while subjects performed real-time joint-attention task. The task-related effects were modeled out, and inter-individual correlation analysis was performed on the residual time-course data. ASD-Normal pairs were less accurate at detecting gaze direction than Normal-Normal pairs. Performance was impaired both in ASD subjects and in their normal partners. The left occipital pole (OP) activation by gaze processing was reduced in ASD subjects, suggesting that deterioration of eye-cue detection in ASD is related to impairment of early visual processing of gaze. On the other hand, their normal partners showed greater activity in the bilateral occipital cortex and the right prefrontal area, indicating a compensatory workload. Inter-brain coherence in the right IFG that was observed in the Normal-Normal pairs (Saito et al., 2010) during EC diminished in ASD-Normal pairs. Intra-brain functional connectivity between the right IFG and right superior temporal sulcus (STS) in normal subjects paired with ASD subjects was reduced compared with in Normal-Normal pairs. This functional connectivity was positively correlated with performance of the normal partners on the eye-cue detection. Considering the integrative role of the right STS in gaze processing, inter-subject synchronization during EC may be a prerequisite for eye cue detection by the normal partner

Episodic memory and episodic future thinking in adults with autism.

The ability to remember past experiences (episodic memory) is thought to be related to the ability to imagine possible future experiences (episodic future thinking). Although previous research has established that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have diminished episodic memory, episodic future thinking has not previously been investigated within this population. In the present study, high-functioning adults with ASD were compared to closely matched typical adults on a task requiring participants to report a series of events that happened to them in the past and a series of events that might happen to them in the future. For each event described, participants completed two modified Memory Characteristics Questionnaire items to assess self-reported phenomenal qualities associated with remembering and imagining, including self-perspective and degree of autonoetic awareness. Participants also completed letter, category, and ideational fluency tasks. Results indicated that participants with ASD recalled/imagined significantly fewer specific events than did comparison participants and that participants with ASD demonstrated impaired episodic memory and episodic future thinking. In line with this finding, participants with ASD were less likely than comparison participants to report taking a field (first-person) perspective and were more likely to report taking an observer (third-person) perspective during retrieval of past events (but not during simulation of future events), highlighting that they were less likely to mentally reexperience past events from their own point of view. There were no group differences in self-reported levels of autonoetic awareness or fluency task performance