Photographic Activity Schedules Research Articles

The effect of photographic activity schedules on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in children with autism spectrum disorder.

Regular moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) has been linked to improved bone health, muscular fitness, cognitive function, sleep, and a reduced risk of depression and obesity. Many children are not engaging in the recommended amount of physical activity. Furthermore, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were found to engage in less physical activity than their peers of typical development. We extended previous research by conducting a physical activity context assessment, which included a comparison of indoor to outdoor activities to evaluate which environment produced the lowest percent of MVPA as recorded by the Observational System for Recording Physical Activity in Children. Given the utility of activity schedules to increase self-management and independent engagement during unstructured and low-preferred tasks, we then taught 3 preschool children diagnosed with ASD to use photographic activity schedules to increase the number of different activities that met the definition of MVPA in the 2 lowest-responding conditions of the physical activity context assessment. MVPA remained low during baseline sessions for all participants and immediately increased with the introduction of activity schedule teaching. All participants quickly met activity schedule teaching mastery criterion and demonstrated high levels of MVPA in generalization and maintenance probes without additional teaching.

Creating Digital Activity Schedules to Promote Independence and Engagement.

Photographic activity schedules have been demonstrated to be effective in helping individuals with autism and other developmental disabilities learn how to complete both simple and complex sequences of activities without prompting from adults. Although the majority of research studies demonstrating the effectiveness of activity schedules have used schedule books composed of static printed pictures attached to physical pages, recently researchers have begun to demonstrate the effectiveness of technology-based activity schedules. In the current article, we provide a task analysis for creating both simple and complex digital activity schedules using Google Slides, a freely available, web-based technology that operates on a variety of digital platforms. We also provide suggestions for how behavior analysts can train parents to use this technology with their children using telehealth procedures.

An evaluation of photographic activity schedules to increase independent playground skills in young children with autism.

We used photographic activity schedules to increase the number of play activities completed by children with autism during unstructured time on the playground. All 3 participants engaged in more playground activities during and after training, and they continued to complete activities when novel photographs were introduced.

IPad® or iPod Touch®: Evaluating Self-Created Electronic Photographic Activity Schedules and Student Preferences

Five secondary students with intellectual disability (ID) participated in a withdrawal design (A-B-A-B) study evaluating the effectiveness of a self-created electronic photographic activity schedule (ePAS). After learning to take photos of various activities using an iPod touch® or iPad®, students learned to use the First Then Visual Schedule application to self-manage task directives. The dependent variables included the percentage of tasks independently and correctly completed and the percentage of steps correctly completed when programming the device. Generalization data were collected in a different setting with different tasks and then using a second device. This study replicated Duttlinger, Ayres, Bevill-Davis, and Douglas (2013), which examined using a paper-based PAS. All five students learned to create and use their own ePAS within 7–12 instructional sessions and generalized their skills to a different setting and device. This research supports teaching students self-management skills that not only increase their independence in completing tasks but also decrease their reliance on others to provide self-management supports.

Teaching Teamwork to Adolescents With Autism: The Cooperative Use of Activity Schedules

We used a multiple baseline design to assess the effects of prompting and reinforcement to teach three pairs of adolescents with autism to use photographic activity schedules to cooperatively complete a multistep vocational task (e.g., cleaning a kitchen). Baseline data indicated that despite being competent schedule followers, participants did not coordinate their actions to complete the schedule cooperatively. Following intervention, we observed an increase in cooperative schedule following. All prompts were removed and the schedule of reinforcement was thinned to the end of the task for two of the three pairs. We discuss the results in terms of increasing the collaborative work skills of individuals with autism.

Social interaction skills for children with autism: a script-fading procedure for nonreaders

Engaging in spontaneous social exchanges is a central skill deficit of children with autism, and one that is often difficult to remediate. The 3 boys (ages 4, 4, and 5 years) who participated in this study had acquired small verbal repertoires, but typically spoke only when answering questions or requesting preferred edible items or toys, and did not converse with a familiar teacher during baseline. During teaching, textual cues (‘‘Look’’ and ‘‘Watch me’’) were embedded in the youngsters’ photographic activity schedules; after learning to use the scripts, the children’s verbal elaborations and unscripted interactions increased and were maintained when a new recipient of interaction was introduced. After scripts were faded, unscripted interactions not only continued but also generalized to different activities that had not been the topic of teaching. The script-fading procedure enabled children with autism to converse with adults, to benefit from adults’ language models, and to engage in language practice that contributes to fluency. DESCRIPTORS: autistic children, antecedent control, pictorial cues, social interaction, script fading

Generalized Schedule Following in a Youth with Autism

Photographic activity schedules were used to increase on-task behaviour in a youth with autism. The multiple probe design included baseline, training, tests for training effects, resequencing of photographs, generalization to new photographs, and maintenance. The results showed that the participant was able to carry out four different chains (photographic activity schedules) without any prompts from the staff, even when the photographs were resequenced, and new photographs were included. On the other hand, there was no reduction of training trials to reach criterion from the first to the fourth chain. The results are discussed with reference to different aspects of generalization.

TREATMENT OF ESCAPE‐MAINTAINED ABERRANT BEHAVIOR WITH ESCAPE EXTINCTION AND PREDICTABLE ROUTINES

We evaluated the effects of two daily activity schedules on 2 participants' rates of aberrant behavior and their compliance. Functional analysis identified the operant function of the participants' aberrant behaviors to be escape from tasks. Participants were taught to use stimuli contained in daily schedules, and were tested based on a modified stimulus-equivalence model that consisted of flash cards and activity schedules comprised of words or photographs that corresponded to the participants' daily activities. On pretests, the participants demonstrated simple and conditional discriminations with the photographs but not with the printed stimuli. A time-delay procedure was used to teach the participants to name the flash cards. Following training, the printed activity schedules corresponded to lower rates of problem behavior and higher rates of compliance than the photographic activity schedules. Performance on posttests indicated the establishment of functional classes of stimuli involving the flash cards and activity schedules even though this type of correspondence was not directly trained.

Teaching children with autism to use photographic activity schedules: maintenance and generalization of complex response chains.

We used a graduated guidance procedure to teach 4 boys with autism to follow photographic activity schedules to increase on-task and on-schedule behavior. The multiple baseline across participants design included baseline, teaching, maintenance, resequencing of photographs, and generalization to novel photographs phases. The results indicated that photographic activity schedules (albums depicting after-school activities) produced sustained engagement, and skills generalized to a new sequence of photographs and to new photographs. The acquisition of schedule-following skills enabled these children with severe developmental disabilities to display lengthy response chains, independently change activities, and change activities in different group home settings in the absence of immediate supervision and prompts from others.

Programming participation in family activities for children with autism: parents' use of photographic activity schedules.

The parents of 3 boys with autism were taught to help their children follow photographic activity schedules depicting a variety of home-living tasks. A multiple baseline across participants showed that the home-based intervention produced increases in children's engagement and social initiations and decreases in disruptive behavior, which were maintained for as long as 10 months.