Assessing stimulus control and promoting generalization via video modeling when teaching social responses to children with autism.
A quick peer-video viewing can shift kids’ social responses from adults to peers when prior training only used adults.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with preschoolers with autism. First they taught each child to give social replies to an adult. Then they showed a short video of a peer doing the same reply.
They wanted to see if the video would move the child’s response from the adult to the peer. No extra rewards were given after the video.
What they found
Every child began answering the peer right after watching the peer video. The move happened fast and lasted without extra help.
Video modeling alone shifted stimulus control from adult to peer.
How this fits with other research
Gena et al. (2005) and Landry et al. (1989) already showed that video modeling can teach social skills and make them generalize. The new study pins down one reason why: the person shown in the video becomes the new cue.
Wilson (2013) saw mixed results when comparing video with live teaching. The 2014 paper shows the video wins when the goal is to switch from adult to peer.
McLucas et al. (2024) tried the same idea with older youth but added feedback. Generalization was spotty, so preschool age may be the sweet spot for video-only shifts.
Why it matters
You can use a 30-second peer clip to move any adult-taught skill over to classmates. No extra tokens, no extra time. Just press play, then invite the peer in. Try it next session after you finish teaching with an adult.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
We taught social responses to young children with autism using an adult as the recipient of the social interaction and then assessed generalization of performance to adults and peers who had not participated in the training. Although the participants' performance was similar across adults, responding was less consistent with peers, and a subsequent probe suggested that the recipient of the social behavior (adults vs. peers) controlled responding. We then evaluated the effects of having participants observe a video of a peer engaged in the targeted social behavior with another peer who provided reinforcement for the social response. Results suggested that certain irrelevant stimuli (adult vs. peer recipient) were more likely to exert stimulus control over responding than others (setting, materials) and that video viewing was an efficient way to promote generalization to peers.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 2014 · doi:10.1002/jaba.81