We used a script-fading package to teach children with autism to initiate social interactions across various activities in the school setting, and we programmed for generalization in the untrained home setting with a sibling. The three participants, ages 8 to 10 years, demonstrated deficits in social initiations with their peers. During baseline,…

A core deficit of people with autism is an inability to initiate and to sustain conversation with others. Several studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the script-fading procedure on improving the social initiation skills of people with autism. Nevertheless, there is little focus on responding to initiations. The purpose of this study was to…

Script fading was used to teach three youths with autism to initiate and sustain verbal interactions under stimulus control consistent with the natural environment. The youths learned to engage in verbal interactions during simulated shopping trips and during visits to community stores. The effectiveness of script fading was examined using a…

Previous studies have shown that most individuals with autism do not show empathic responding. The present study is an attempt to teach such skills. Script-fading procedures have been used to teach other social-interaction skills, so they are applied here to teach empathic responding. This study included three adolescents with autism, two males…