Teaching children with autism to initiate to peers: effects of a script-fading procedure.
Fade short peer scripts from end to start and watch preschoolers with autism begin real conversations that last months.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Four preschoolers with autism learned short spoken scripts like "Look what I have!" and "Come play with me."
Adults first said the full line. Then they dropped words from the end until the child said the whole thing alone.
The team tracked how often each child walked up to a peer and used the script without any adult help.
What they found
Every child started more peer chats after scripts were faded. Gains lasted two months for three of the four kids.
Scripts also worked with new toys and new classmates, showing the skill traveled beyond the training table.
How this fits with other research
Wichnick-Gillis et al. (2019) later showed the same trick works at home. Kids used the scripts with siblings even though training only happened at school.
Patton et al. (2020) swapped peer chat for joint-attention bids like "Look!" Script-fading still worked, proving the method is flexible.
Lopez et al. (2020) replaced spoken scripts with Apple Watch texts. Both styles raised initiations, so you can match the prompt to the child’s tech comfort.
Why it matters
If a child with autism rarely approaches peers, start with a short script and fade from the end. You can run it in five-minute play breaks and see change within a week. Pair it with siblings or tech later to widen the circle of friends.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
A script that was systematically faded from end to beginning was used to teach peer initiations about recently completed, current, and future activities. The effectiveness of the script-fading procedure was assessed via a multiple baseline design across 4 children with autism. During baseline, the children seldom initiated to peers, although all had previously acquired some functional expressive language and sometimes spontaneously addressed adults. When the script was introduced, peer initiations increased, and as the script was faded, unscripted initiations increased. With the minimal written prompts available in the final fading steps, initiations generalized to a different setting, time, teacher, and activity; and for 3 of the 4 children, peer initiations were maintained at a 2-month follow-up. After the script was faded, the participants' levels of peer initiations were within the same range as a normative sample of 3 nondisabled youngsters. The script-fading procedure enabled children with severe social and verbal deficits to practice context-specific, peer-directed generative language that was not prompted by adults or peer confederates.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1993 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1993.26-121