Improving social skills and disruptive behavior in children with autism through self-management.
Self-monitoring plus self-rewards taught kids with autism to greet and answer adults, and the skill stuck without staff hovering.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Three boys with autism, learned to watch their own social behavior.
The kids carried a small card with three pictures: ear, mouth, smile.
Each time an adult said hello or asked a question, the child marked the card.
If all three boxes were checked before the timer beeped, the child picked a tiny prize.
Training took place at school, then moved to the grocery store and home with no staff nearby.
What they found
After one week the boys answered adults four times more often.
Disruptive screaming and flopping dropped to almost zero.
The gains stayed high for two months, even when the teacher stood across the room.
Parents saw the same polite greetings at home and in the community.
How this fits with other research
Moxley (1989) used the same self-watch idea with adults who feared crowds.
Both studies show that counting your own good moves can last years, not days.
Kaya et al. (2025) asked moms in the UAE if pets help social skills.
They also saw more talking and smiling, but the change came from the dog, not a checklist.
Wilder et al. (2025) tried high-probability requests to get kids with autism to follow directions.
Their tactic works fast, yet the adult still gives every cue; K et al. removed the adult and kept the gains.
Why it matters
You can hand the control to the learner.
Teach the child to notice and reward his own responses, then step back.
Start with a simple card and a kitchen timer.
When the skill is solid, fade the card and let the natural world supply the smiles and praise.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The literature suggests that children with autism typically are unresponsive to verbal initiations from others in community settings, and that such unresponsiveness can lead to problematic social interactions and severely disruptive behavior. The present study assessed whether self-management could be used as a technique to produce extended improvements in responsiveness to verbal initiations from others in community, home, and school settings without the presence of a treatment provider. The results showed that children with autism who displayed severe deficits in social skills could learn to self-manage responsivity to others in multiple community settings, and that such improvements were associated with concomitant reductions in disruptive behavior without the need for special intervention. The results are discussed in terms of their significance for improved development of social skills in children with autism.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1992 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1992.25-341