Harnessing Repetitive Behaviours to Engage Attention and Learning in a Novel Therapy for Autism: An Exploratory Analysis

Rigorous, quantitative examination of therapeutic techniques anecdotally reported to have been successful in people with autism who lack communicative speech will help guide basic science toward a more complete characterisation of the cognitive profile in this underserved subpopulation, and show the extent to which theories and results developed with the high-functioning subpopulation may apply. This study examines a novel therapy, the “Rapid Prompting Method” (RPM). RPM is a parent-developed communicative and educational therapy for persons with autism who do not speak or who have difficulty using speech communicatively. The technique aims to develop a means of interactive learning by pointing amongst multiple-choice options presented at different locations in space, with the aid of sensory “prompts” which evoke a response without cueing any specific response option. The prompts are meant to draw and to maintain attention to the communicative task – making the communicative and educational content coincident with the most physically salient, attention-capturing stimulus – and to extinguish the sensory–motor preoccupations with which the prompts compete. Video-recorded RPM sessions with nine autistic children ages 8–14 years who lacked functional communicative speech were coded for behaviours of interest. An analysis controlled for age indicates that exposure to the claimed therapy appears to support a decrease in repetitive behaviours and an increase in the number of multiple-choice response options without any decrease in successful responding. Direct gaze is not related to successful responding, suggesting that direct gaze might not be any advantage for this population and need not in all cases be a precondition to communication therapies

The Neuroscience of Justice Sensitivity

From an early age, people care deeply about justice. However, reactions to injustice are altered by being involved in the situation, and people differ in their sensitivity to justice. Research suggests that dispositional self-focused and other-focused justice sensitivity reflect antisocial and prosocial tendencies. However, it is unclear (1) whether similar behavioral effects can be elicited by brief perspective-taking manipulations and (2) whether these justice orientations are supported by distinct neural systems. Across six studies, participants rated moral scenarios in either a second-person or third-person frame, then played a three-party ultimatum game and completed tasks probing antisocial and prosocial behavior. In Study 1, self-oriented justice sensitivity predicted greater acceptance of distributions after the second-person than third-person frame and, surprisingly, reduced antisocial behavior. Study 2 found no effects of perspective framing, but a negative relation between other-oriented justice sensitivity and acceptance of distributions that were unfair to a third-party. In Study 3, within-participant manipulation of perspective changed rejection rates for distributions which were fair to the self but unfair to another. Study 4 found that proportional equity was a better predictor of behavior than comparative equality. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, Study 5 found that justice dispositions predicted activity within regions important for saliency processing and executive control. Moreover, these orientations were associated with activity in different networks, suggesting that they arise from distinct processes. Finally, Study 6 failed to find effects of justice sensitivity or perspective framing on electrophysiological measures of neural activity. Overall, these results suggest that perspective framing can influence behavior, though often interacts with justice dispositions. Moreover, justice orientations relate to largely separable neural systems and may prove important for future investigations of social functioning

Harnessing repetitive behaviours to engage attention and learning in a novel therapy for autism:An exploratory analysis

Rigorous, quantitative examination of therapeutic techniques anecdotally reported to have been successful in people with autism who lack communicative speech will help guide basic science towards a more complete characterisation of the cognitive profile in this underserved subpopulation, and show the extent to which theories and results developed with the high-functioning subpopulation may apply. This study examines a novel therapy, the Rapid Prompting Method (RPM). RPM is a parent-developed communicative and educational therapy for persons with autism who do not speak or who have difficulty using speech communicatively. The technique aims to develop a means of interactive learning by pointing amongst multiple choice options presented at different locations in space, with the aid of sensory prompts which evoke a response without cueing any specific response option. The prompts are meant to draw and to maintain attention to the communicative task – making the communicative and educational content co-incident with the most physically salient, attention-capturing stimulus – and to extinguish the sensory-motor preoccupations with which the prompts compete. Video-recorded RPM sessions with 9 autistic children ages 8 to 14 years who lacked functional communicative speech were coded for behaviours of interest. An analysis controlled for age indicates that exposure to the claimed therapy appears to support a decrease in repetitive behaviours and an increase in the number of multiple-choice response options without any decrease in successful responding. Direct gaze is not related to successful responding, suggesting that direct gaze might not be any advantage for this population and need not in all cases be a precondition to communication therapies