A Meta-Analysis of Functional Communication Training for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in South Korea
FCT grows communication for Korean autistic kids, but you will need more steps to reliably shrink problem behavior.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Young (2020) pooled nine Korean studies that used Functional Communication Training with autistic children.
The team looked at how FCT changed both talking and problem behavior.
All studies were done in South Korea, so culture and language stayed the same.
What they found
Kids learned to ask for things better, with a medium-size boost.
Problem behavior did not drop in a clear way across the nine studies.
In short: FCT helps communication, but do not count on it to erase hitting or yelling by itself.
How this fits with other research
Blair et al. (2025) looked at 34 newer studies and saw big drops in problem behavior.
The Korean set is older and smaller, so Blair et al. (2025) now gives the fuller picture.
Torelli et al. (2024) tried FCT in classrooms without extinction and also got mixed behavior drops, matching the Korean result.
Martin et al. (1997) showed long-term cuts in problem behavior at home, proving FCT can work when teams stick with it.
Why it matters
Use FCT to build talking first, then add extra plans like extinction or reinforcement thinning if you need to crush problem behavior. Check Blair et al. (2025) for the full playbook, and keep an eye on maintenance like Tsami et al. (2020) warn.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The purpose of this study is to analyze, synthesize, and find out the size of effects by conducting a meta-analysis of functional communication training intervention study for children with autism categorical disorder in South Korea. For this, academic search database were used to collect thesis and articles published in February 2020. The final 9 studies were selected according to the criteria for selecting the target articles for meta-analysis, and the effect size for 9 articles was calculated and analyzed. The effect size was calculated using the Tau-U value. As a result, functional communication training interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder showed a significant medium effect size for increased communication behavior and for decreasing problem behavior was not significant. There were no moderator variables that significantly influenced the effectiveness of the intervention. In the methodological aspect of the study, the key indicators of fidelity, social validity, and generalization were found to be low reporting rate, and there was a problem in measuring inter-observer reliability. Based on the research results, suggestions were made to improve the quality of research and suggestions for future research.
Journal of Behavior Analysis and Support, 2020 · doi:10.22874/KABA.2020.7.1.115