Evaluating the Effects of Establishing Eye Contact on the Skill Acquisition of Individuals with Autism

Abstract

Researchers widely assert that requiring eye contact from students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) before instruction is highly important to the outcome of teaching (Greer and Ross in Verbal behavior analysis, Pearson Education, New York, 2008; Lovaas in J Consult Clin Psychol 55(1):3–9, 1977. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006x.55.1.3). However, to our knowledge, no research to date has evaluated the effects of this component of instruction on skill acquisition. In this current study, we evaluated the effect of requiring student eye contact from participants with ASD prior to giving an instruction on the rate of skill acquisition. Using an adapted alternating treatments design, this study compared the skill acquisition of three participants diagnosed with ASD during discrete-trial instruction (DTI) for expressive identification of novel items. Requiring eye contact was manipulated as a treatment integrity error during DTI in high-integrity, low-integrity, and control conditions. The experimenter established eye contact with the participants prior to giving an instruction during 100% of trials in the high-integrity condition, whereas eye contact was only established prior to the instruction in 67% of trials in the low-integrity condition. Results indicate that all three participants acquired expressive labels for items in fewer sessions in the high-integrity condition as compared to the low-integrity condition. Implications for the impact of eye contact on skill acquisition are discussed.