A Practitioner Model for Increasing Eye Contact in Children With Autism

Although many teaching techniques for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) require the instructor to gain the child's eye contact prior to delivering an instructional demand, the literature contains notably few procedures that reliably produce this outcome. To address this problem, we evaluated the effects of a sequential model for increasing eye contact in children with ASD. The model included the following phases: contingent praise only (for eye contact), contingent edibles plus praise, stimulus prompts plus contingent edibles and praise, contingent video and praise, schedule thinning, and maintenance evaluations for up to 2 years. Results indicated that the procedures increased eye contact for 20 participants (one additional participant did not require consequences). For 16 participants, praise (alone) was not sufficient to support eye contact; however, high levels of eye contact were typically maintained with these participants when therapists used combined schedules of intermittent edibles or video and continuous praise. We discuss some limitations of this model and directions for future research on increasing eye contact for children with ASD.