Abstract

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are at an elevated risk of becoming lost in situations due to running away or wandering behaviors. When children with ASD become lost it may be difficult for them to effectively and efficiently seek help from community helpers in a safe manner due to communication deficits and poor social skills. This study aims to teach children with ASD how to identify when they are lost and how to seek help from police officers in the community by vocalizing the problem and using a communication card. Generalization probes were conducted with three children diagnosed with ASD before and after behavioral skills training (BST) to determine mastery of help seeking behaviors. Remedial BST and in situ trainings were used to increase generalization. Two of the three participants were able to independently seek help from a confederate law enforcement officer and one participant required a gestural prompt. Keywords: BST, law enforcement, help seeking, lost identification

Advisor

Angelica Aguirre

Committee Member

Daniel Houlihan

Committee Member

John O'Neill

Date of Degree

2019

Language

english

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Psychology

College

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

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In Copyright