A Conversational Intervention Focused on Perspective-Taking Ability for a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder

抄録

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulty communicating with others and maintaining natural conversations. The present study aimed to examine the effectiveness of an intervention focused on the perspective-taking (PT) ability of a child with ASD. This intervention targeted PT skills and was designed to encourage the participant to recognize his emotions, understand his mental states and those of the others, and learn a practical way of talking. The participant’s discourse ability was assessed using Theory of Mind tasks, Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), and conversational analysis at baseline, post-intervention, and follow-up. In the conversational analysis, we examined his utterances, focusing on their adjacency in relation to prior adult utterances, and his pragmatic skills. The results showed that his scores for empathic concern (EC) increased on the IRI, and his pragmatic skills improved after the intervention. Therefore, it was found that our intervention focused on PT ability had some effects on improving the discourse ability of a child with ASD.