Teaching Siblings to Encourage and Praise Play: Supporting Interactions When One Sibling is Autistic

In this study, we taught four non-autistic siblings to encourage and praise play with their autistic siblings as well as self-monitor those play skills. We also measured changes in social-communicative behaviors during siblings’ interactions. All non-autistic siblings learned th e targeted play skills and the majority increased social-communicative behaviors. Only one autistic child increased their social-communicative behaviors toward their non-autistic sibling. On average, sibling dyads engaged in more interactions, with an increase in the duration of interactions during play. Future sibling intervention research should evaluate child characteristics and intervention factors that may influence children’s response to intervention, additional interventions, and continue to incorporate other measures of relationship quality.
Source: Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities - Category: Disability Source Type: research