Conversational skills for autistic adolescents: teaching assertiveness in naturalistic game settings.
Five minutes of model-rehearse plus tokens before card or ball games builds assertive talk that lasts months for autistic teens.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Three autistic teens joined card and ball games in a community room.
Before each game the trainer showed a short model of assertive talk.
The teens then practiced the line and earned tokens for using it during play.
Skills were tracked across baseline, training, and a follow-up 4.5 months later.
What they found
Assertive comments jumped from near zero to high levels for all three teens.
Gains stayed strong months later without extra coaching.
How this fits with other research
Davison et al. (1984) ran the same BST-in-game setup with adults who have IDD.
They also saw skill growth, but the new skills did not carry over to their real job site.
The teens in G et al. kept the skills for months, showing stronger maintenance.
Macadangdang et al. (2022) later moved the token-plus-BST package into middle-school ball games.
They taught motor skills instead of talk, proving the method travels across ages and targets.
Why it matters
You can teach social assertiveness in the games your clients already like.
Run a five-minute model-rehearse round before Uno or catch, hand a token for each clear request, and watch the talk grow.
The skill is likely to stick, so you get long-term gains from a tiny pre-game routine.
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Join Free →Pick one game and one assertive line, model it, have the teen rehearse, then drop a token each time you hear it during play.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
A naturalistic social skills training program was used to teach assertive responses to three autistic adolescents. Training and assessment of positive and negative assertions occurred in the context of two game situations-a card game and a ball game. Training consisted of modeling and behavioral rehearsal prior to each game, with tokens delivered contingent on assertive responses. Evaluation of training effects was accomplished in a multiple baseline across response classes. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of the procedure in generating high levels of positive and negative assertions that maintained across a 4.5-month follow-up interval. This in vivo procedure for teaching social behaviors permits the concurrent acquisition of assertive responses and leisure behaviors, two skills that are of special importance in improving the quality of autistic youth's experiences with their peers.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 1984 · doi:10.1007/BF02409582