Date Available

4-13-2017

Year of Publication

2017

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

College

Education

Department/School/Program

Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

First Advisor

Dr. Jonathan Campbell

Abstract

Social skills are important for building and maintaining relationships, effective communication, and providing appropriate responses within social contexts. Deficits in social skills are often exhibited in individuals with comorbid Down syndrome (DS) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Peer-delivered interventions and other behavioral techniques for teaching specific social skills show effectiveness; however, the paucity of intervention research including individuals with DS-ASD has resulted in little guidance for how best to teach social skills and ensure generalization and maintenance. In the present study, a multiple probe study across behaviors, replicated across participants, assessed the effectiveness of peer-delivered simultaneous prompting in teaching socials skills to four adults with DS-ASD. The overarching purposes of this project were (a) to explore whether peer-mediators with DS-only can use simultaneous prompting reliably for teaching social skills, and (b) to examine the influence of simultaneous prompting to teach social skills to adults with dual-diagnoses of DS and ASD. Study findings add to the DS-ASD literature base on intervention design and implementation as well as the literature base for intervention delivery by peers with identified developmental and intellectual disabilities.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/ETD.2017.061

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