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Copyright 2006 by the

Psychology in Spain, 2006, Vol. 10. No 1, 37-51

Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos


headerCOMPREHENSIVE PROGRAM FOR TEACHING SKILLS TO CHILDREN WITH AUTISM.gif (5528 bytes)
bodyLuis Antonio Pérez-González and Gladys Williams*.gif (2783 bytes)
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The purpose of this research was to test a comprehensive system for teaching skills to children diagnosed with autism. Three children received intensive teaching for approximately three months. Each child received a daily set of programs tailored to his/her functional level. These programs had been demonstrated as effective in previous studies for teaching children with learning difficulties. Other programs were derived from basic learning principles. We evaluated on a continual basis the effectiveness of each program with each child, so that the programs that were not effective were replaced by others with more effective procedures. The three children learned roughly one skill for every hour of teaching. They learned more skills per hour when the intervention was intensive; this outcome shows that an intensive program increases the effectiveness of the intervention. On the whole, this system was shown to be effective for teaching skills to children with autism. Thus, it served to increase the children’s quality of life and that of their families. The present intervention can be applied to Special Education schools.

Key words: autism, pervasive developmental delays, effective intervention, behaviour analysis, applied behaviour analysis

Esta investigación tuvo el objetivo de probar un sistema integral para enseñar a niños con el diagnóstico de autismo. Tres niños recibieron enseñanza intensiva durante aproximadamente tres meses, con programas adaptados individualmente a su nivel funcional. Esos programas se habían demostrado eficaces, en investigaciones anteriores, para enseñar a niños con problemas de aprendizaje o se derivaron de principios básicos de aprendizaje. Evaluamos constantemente la eficacia de cada programa con cada niño, y sustituimos inmediatamente los programas menos efectivos por otros eficaces. Los tres niños aprendieron aproximadamente una habilidad por cada hora de enseñanza. Aprendieron más habilidades por hora cuando la intervención fue intensiva; esto muestra que un programa intensivo incrementa la efectividad de la intervención. En conjunto, este sistema se mostró efectivo para enseñar habilidades a niños con autismo, lo cuál supuso mejorar su calidad de vida y la de sus familiares. Este sistema puede ser aplicado en los colegios de educación especial.

Palabras clave: autismo, trastornos generalizados del desarrollo, intervención efectiva, análisis de la conducta, análisis aplicado de la conducta.


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The original Spanish version of this paper has been previously published in Psicothema, 2005, Vol. 17. No 2, 233-244
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Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Luis Antonio Pérez-González, Departamento de Psicología, Universidad de Oviedo, 33003 Oviedo (Spain), E-mail: laperez@uniovi.es

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