Social Stories and Video Modelling are two relatively novel approaches which appear to hold some promise as emerging intervention strategies. Targeting pivotal behaviors for intervention should lead to more widespread beneficial behavior change in untargeted areas. Much research has been devoted to develop early intervention strategies targeting the core deficits in autism (e.g., Groden & Cautela (1998) ), including social initiations which Koegel and associates have argued may be pivotal to more generalized skill development. The isolating nature of this disorder, which results from the core deficits in social interaction and communication, poses significant challenges to the affected population and their families. IntroductionĪutism is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting approximately 60 per 10,000 children worldwide. These results support the effectiveness of video self-modelled Social Stories and illustrate the potential of combined intervention techniques for remedying the social deficits faced by this population. Concomitant behavior changes, namely, increased levels of communicative behavior and levels of social engagement were also observed. In addition, these behaviors successfully generalized across settings, toys, and communication partners. A multiple-baseline across behaviors design revealed that video self-modelled Social Stories were effective at improving all three target behaviors: greeting, inviting to play, and contingent responding.

The present study investigated the effectiveness of combining Social Stories and Video Self-Modelling (VSM) to teach social skills to a three-year-old child with autism.

Istopmotion 2.1