First Advisor

Athanasiou, Michelle

Document Type

Dissertation

Date Created

8-2022

Department

College of Education and Behavioral Sciences, School Psychology, School Psychology Student Work

Abstract

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are known to have deficits in the areas of social interaction and social communication. One postulated explanation for the challenges seen in these areas is an underdevelopment of Theory of Mind (ToM). Research in the area of ToM and the mediation of perspective-taking interventions on social interactive and communicative skills has yielded a wide range of results and needs to be further explored. Thus, the present study aimed to contribute to the field of research by implementing a perspective-taking intervention with children who have ASD, with the goal of enhancing positive outcomes related to social-communicative and social-interactive behaviors. The present study utilized several modalities to look at how the perspective-taking intervention impacted social-communicative and social-interactive behaviors and whether participants were able to further develop ToM. Through the use of a multiple-baseline design across five participants, the researcher was able to investigate whether the intervention used produced significant results. While the results of the study did not yield significant outcomes in the improvement of social-interactive and social-communicative skills and the further development of ToM, the study did shed light on other factors that can help future research in the area of ToM and the expression of ASD symptomology. The present study could aid practitioners and researchers in the utilization of various modalities of treatments (e.g., virtual) and the potential benefits for these types of modalities with this target population. Further, since results did not yield significant outcomes in the improvement of social-interactive and social communicative skills as well as the further development in ToM for this subset of the ASD population, it may be beneficial to investigate how difference subsets of the population may benefit from the perspective taking intervention utilized in this study. Lastly, it would be important to recognize that this type of research could further aid in the development of better targeted interventions for different subsets of the ASD population and could better inform practitioners when targeting social-interactive and social-communicative skills.

Extent

206 pages

Local Identifiers

Kim_unco_0161D_11043.pdf

Rights Statement

Copyright is held by the author.

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