Type of Document Dissertation Author Ivey, Michelle Louise Author's Email Address iveys@me.com URN etd-12012008-121513 Title Priming as a Means of Increasing Spontaneous Verbal Language in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Degree Ph.D. Department Educational Psychology and Special Education Advisory Committee
Advisor Name Title L. Juane Heflin Ph. D. Committee Chair Colleen O'Rourke Ph. D. Committee Member Lauren Adamson Ph. D. Committee Member Paul Alberto Ph. D Committee Member Keywords
- pervasive developmental disorder
- preteaching
- intervention
- information processing
Date of Defense 2008-10-27 Availability unrestricted Abstract ABSTRACT
THE EFFECTS OF PRIMING ON SPONTANEOUS VERBAL LANGUAGE IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDERS
by
Michelle L. Ivey
A multi-element design was used to investigate the effect of priming on spontaneous verbal communication in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Three children with ASD engaged in 20-minute thematic activity sessions (ACT) with the investigator. Prior to the ACTs, they met with another trained researcher for 10-minute presessions. Half of the presessions incorporated the conventions of priming with materials to be used in the upcoming ACT (i.e., related presessions; RP). During the other half of the presessions, participants were not primed for the upcoming ACT (i.e., unrelated presesessions; UP). The researcher conducted presessions so the investigator was blind to the condition. Procedural fidelity checks of the presessions, based on a checklist of the critical components of priming, revealed 100% adherence to procedures.
Participants’ utterances during ACT were recorded, transcribed, and coded based on functionality. The dependent variables were spontaneous comments, requests, topic initiations, social information seeking, and total. Once the criterion of a 30% increase from the mean of the first 3 UP was achieved for three consecutive sessions, priming was withdrawn and then reinstated to demonstrate a functional relation. Additionally, Cohen's d was calculated to determine effect size for the intervention. Reliability was assessed for transcription and coding. There were fewer than 10 word disagreements on any transcript, which did not affect coding. A line by line comparison of the coding across the dependent variables yielded an average reliability of 85%.
Visual inspection of the data and statistical analysis revealed that two of the three participants reached criterion for spontaneous comments (Cohen's d = .32 and .95), one reached criterion for total utterances (Cohen's d = 2.99), the other achieved the goal during the reinstatement following the withdrawal (Cohen’s d = 1.00). None increased requesting. Topic initiation and social information seeking did not occur with sufficient frequency for meaningful analyses. Similar to most interventions with individuals with ASD, priming was effective for increasing spontaneous verbal comments for some but not all of the participants. Priming was highly effective for two of the participants. This ground-breaking study creates momentum for further investigation and examination of the variables that affect benefit.
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