Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of teaching self-monitoring on the promotion of the social skills of a student (CA: 13-6; IQ: 57) with autistic disorder. The youth was requested to perform a joint work activity (handicrafts) with a peer with mental retardation (CA: 17-5; IQ: 36). He was instructed to monitor the targeted social skills necessary for that activity. Self-monitoring was introduced as follows: the youth was instructed to circle either "yes" or "no" for each item on a check sheet listing the targeted social skills. In the first phase, in which self-monitoring was introduced, it was found that only circling the items on the self-monitoring sheet did not result in an increase in the targeted social skills. In the second phase, self-monitoring skills were taught through video feedback. After that training, the youth was able to discriminate whether the targeted social skills were appropriate or not appropriate, and his rate of accurate self-monitoring and the performance of the targeted social skills increased. Discussion of these results dealt with the effectiveness of the self-monitoring procedure in increasing appropriate self-evaluation, as well as modeling and correspondence training.
