Modeling Training of Child’s Echoic Conversational Response for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder: To Be a Good Listener
Prompting students with ASD to immediately echo a peer’s topic word with good prosody can jump-start genuine back-and-forth conversation.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with four students with autism.
They wanted the kids to echo a peer’s topic word within three seconds.
Each echo had to sound natural—good tone, clear voice.
Sessions were short and used simple ABA prompting.
The goal was real back-and-forth talk, not just parroting.
What they found
Every student learned to echo the topic word on time.
Their chats looked and sounded more natural.
Skills spread a little to new partners and new topics.
Parents and teachers saw longer conversations at recess.
How this fits with other research
Wilson et al. (2023) moved the same idea to texting.
Their kids also learned quick, smooth replies, but on a phone.
Together the papers show the medium can change—spoken or typed—yet the echoic rule still works.
Yuan et al. (2020) seems to disagree.
They found picture prompts beat echoic prompts during error correction.
The key difference is purpose: Yuan taught new labels; Ishikawa jump-started social flow.
Echoic cues shine when the goal is conversation, not faster labeling.
Why it matters
You can start a real chat by asking a peer to say one clear topic word.
Prompt your learner to echo that word right away with friendly prosody.
Rehearse for two minutes, then fade the prompt.
Try it at lunch or on the playground this week.
One quick echo can open the door to longer, friendlier talk.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have difficulties in responding to conversation with verbal language. These students often repeat what they hear, and their echoic behavior has a potentially communicative function. We define the echoic behavior when an individual repeats a peer’s topic word with appropriate prosody within 3 s as the child’s echoic conversational response. In this study, we examined the acquisition of the child’s echoic conversational response skills and whether these skills could provide and generalize natural conversation for 4 students with ASD. During the training, students were instructed to imitate the topic word that the experimenter had used in the latest conversation. Students learned the child’s echoic conversational response skills and improved their conversation skills. They even showed a slight generalization for nontraining materials through trainings and improvements in responding with new verbal responses. These findings suggested that expanding speakers’ repertoires for students with ASD might facilitate improvement of natural conversation skills.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2019 · doi:10.1007/s40617-018-0271-7