Journal Scan: Obedience
Amanda Surdock, M.A.

Editor's Note: The Journal Scan column is designed to share information from professional journals that might be useful to The Baddour Center's staff and families. The citation for this quarter's selection is as follows: SooHoo, A. (2009). Using video modeling to teach teenagers with autism to request assistance during vocational tasks. The NADD Bulletin, 12(1), 8-12.

Video modeling is a method used to teach individuals by having the person watch a video of a model demonstrating a target behavior, then giving the person an opportunity to engage in the target behavior. Video modeling has been successfully used with children, especially those with autism, and has been used to teach selfcare skills, play skills and social skills. The researcher was interested in using this method with teenagers with autism to teach them to ask for assistance at work. Individuals with autism, especially teenagers, tend to learn how to complete tasks in a very specific way, and sometimes have difficulty asking for help if they run out of supplies. The researcher designed a video modeling intervention to teach that particular skill.

This study used three teenage participants with an autism diagnosis who were in a pre-vocational program at their school. The participants were given the parts to complete an assembly task, but did not have enough parts to make a complete set. The target behavior for this study was either asking for help or asking for more parts. They were given a video teaching task to start with that showed them how to learn from a video model, and then they were given their task. If they did not ask for help after running out of parts, they were shown a video of a person asking for help when they ran out of supplies. This procedure was repeated until the individual asked for help or more supplies. After they learned to ask for help with the first task, the participants were given a second task, to see if they would also ask for help with that task. Of the three participants, only one consistently asked for help after the intervention.

So what does this research mean? To start with, video modeling is a tool that we can use to teach skills to our residents. It seems to be especially useful for teaching social skills and can be used with individuals who may have difficulty understanding or using speech. The other important part of this study is the generalization, or lack of it. This study indicated that using video modeling to teach a skill in one setting will not necessarily mean that they will use that skill in another setting. Therefore, it would be necessary to teach the skill in multiple settings, and/or teach similar tasks individually instead of expecting the person to apply what they've learned from one situation to the next. However, their findings are based only on three participants. Other research on video modeling has yielded more promising findings. It may be that slight adjustments to the training procedures could increase generalization, or that people who have different characteristics than the ones studied here might derive more benefit. So, as we often find in research, the jury is still out. More study is needed.


Education & Research Training Schedule
Second Quarter 2009
Teamwork

Corinn Johnson
Amanda Surdock
Ashley Durkee

Tuesday April 28, 1:15 pm
Tuesday May 12, 10:00 am
Tuesday May 19, 10:00 am
Wednesday May 20, 1:15 pm
Wednesday May 27, 1:15 pm
Monday June 1, 4:45 pm
Tuesday June 2, 10:00 am