The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of enhanced milieu teaching on the spontaneity of functional communication behavior of children with autism. Using Multiple-probe baseline design across subjects, the percentage of spontaneous gestu...
The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of enhanced milieu teaching on the spontaneity of functional communication behavior of children with autism. Using Multiple-probe baseline design across subjects, the percentage of spontaneous gesture(contact pointing, show object, manual sign) in order to request object/behavior, comment, reject were measured. The intervention was composed of 9-19 sessions in classroom during the meal time, and 3 generalization sessions were conducted to examine the generalization across setting(in the school cafeteria during the scheduled lunchtime). To examine the maintenance effect, 4 follow-up sessions were conducted after 3 weeks. The results of this study were as follows: First, using enhanced milieu teaching, the percentage of spontaneous gesture of children with autism were increased. Second, the increased performance of spontaneous gesture were generalized to new situation(a cafeteria at school for the lunchtime) through enhanced milieu teaching. Third, the increased performance of spontaneous gesture were maintained through enhanced milieu teaching. These results suggest that enhance milieu teaching is effective intervention for spontaneity of communicative gesture of children with autism. In addition, this study shows that it is important to enhance the pragmatic functions and the form of intentional communication acts produced by autistic children.