Increasing Conversational Interactions Between Verbal High School Students With Autism and Their Peers Without Disabilities

Self-prompted communication books were used in combination with conversational peer orientation to increase conversational interactions of verbal high school students with autism or autistic-like behavior with their peers without disabilities. Previous investigators have used communication books only with students with autism or intellectual disability with limited or no verbal or reading skills. The six high school participants in this study could read and were verbal. We sought to determine whether the communication books would be accepted by peers without disabilities in general education classrooms or whether the books would stigmatize the students with disabilities. Finally, we assessed the effects of having a peer with a learning disability as the teacher of conversational interaction skills. We interpreted our results to conclude that the communication book package was associated with increased conversational interactions for all participants with their general education peers and that communication books were viewed positively by conversational partners.