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New Techniques in Interventions for Children with Autism Spectrum

Christos K Nikopoulos and Evangelos Manolitsis

Verbal instructions (VI) and In vivo modeling are two commonly used instructional methods in the interventions for individuals with autism. The use of visual supports (VS) and particularly the use of static pictures (SP) and video modeling (VM) have also shown very encouraging results. Yet, there has not been any study to directly assess the effectiveness of each method. Thus, the present study was designed to assess the effectiveness of these four instructional methods across a number of different tasks. Nine children diagnosed with autism participated and experimental control was accomplished using a single-group repeated measures design. The impact of each method on children’s performance was determined through comparisons of the mean percentages of the completed steps in each task. Results showed that VM was the only instructional method which was more effective than VI. Possible reasons for the superiority of VM are provided and implications for future research are identified.