None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
The purpose of the intervention is to improve the social and communication skills of children with autism. We aim to do this by using children's everyday school context and their typically-developing class peers. We suspect, that both children with autism and their class peers will demonstrate signicant improvements in their social and communication skills following the intervention.
Interventions
The intervention will primarily be implemented by the class teacher of the child with autism within the classroom. During the one-term intervention (8 weeks), the child with autism will watch a DVD episode with their class once per week (15-20 minutes). We also request parents watch the corresponding episode each week at home with their child to reinforce the skills being worked on by the whole class at school.. The intervention DVD is pre-taped, where youth who are actors model the desired skil
The intervention will primarily be implemented by the class teacher of the child with autism within the classroom. During the one-term intervention (8 weeks), the child with autism will watch a DVD episode with their class once per week (15-20 minutes). We also request parents watch the corresponding episode each week at home with their child to reinforce the skills being worked on by the whole class at school.. The intervention DVD is pre-taped, where youth who are actors model the desired skills. There is a superhero theme used throughout the DVD to appeal to children. The DVD contains 10 episodes, each focusing on a social or communication skill children with autism find difficult (e.g., perspective-taking, sharing, initiating interactions, repetitive play). During the week, the teacher will facilitate discussions with the child/their class before and after they go out to lunch (reminding them about the things they have learnt from the DVD). The discussions will occur Monday-Friday and last approximately 3-5 minutes before and after lunch. There is also a video-modelling project where children film themselves playing/interacting during class activities and watch the footage back to the class and discuss it (these activities will happen with the whole class). The video-modelling project is a one-off project that will occur in the last week of the intervention. it is anticipated to take one hour from filming to class discussions. However, this will vary slightly depending on the individual teacher and their classroom routine/schedule. Three class buddies will be selected by the teacher and trained by the researcher. The researcher will train the buddies for 30 minutes at the start of week one of the intervention. During the term the buddies will help facilitate social interactions in the playground for all children in their class. Adherence will be monitored by researchers using a weekly checklist. Reasons for non-adherence of activities will be recorded (e.g., school camp, children away).
Sponsors
Australian Catholic University
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Treatment
Masking
Blinded (masking used) (Subject, Outcomes Assessor)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
5 Years to 12 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
Children with autism: need to have a formal diagnosis of autism (made by a paediatrician or psychiatrist using recognised diagnostic procedures e.g. ADOS/DSM-IV). Children with autism need to attend a mainstream school and attend a mainstream classroom. Typically-Developing class buddies: No diagnosis of autism/other developmental disorders and no concerns raised by parents or teachers about the children’s development. The Conners Comprehensive Behavior Rating Scales (CCBRS; Conners, 2008) will be used as a screening measure to confirm the presence or absence of autism symptoms. Children with autism need to score above the clinical cut off (T-Score >70) and class buddies needed to score below the borderline clinical cut off (T-score <65)
Exclusion criteria
Children with autism will be included if they have a dual diagnosis where ADHD is included, provided autism is the primary diagnosis. Children with autism will be excluded if they are diagnosed with intellectual disability. Class buddies will be excluded if they scored above the clinical cut off on the CCBRS.
Outcome results
None listed