These findings suggest that an appropriately designed computer program could be an effective aid for teaching problem solving skills to children with autism.
A program was developed to present everyday conflicts and elicit solutions.
For example, two children would be fighting over their turn to use a slide in the playground.
This was followed by icons representing animated alternative problem solutions such as making a polite request versus throwing a tantrum.
Children were also requested to produce alternative solutions; these were reinforced by short clips of a satisfactory resolution to the conflict and access to any one of eight reinforcing scenes.
We hypothesized that exposure to animated solutions and the reinforcement of alternative solutions would jointly enhance the production of the latter.
Based on the finding that sensory reinforcers enhance the learning rate of young children with autism (Rincover, 1978), participants could choose among sensory (e.g., dynamic spirals) or natural reinforcement, animation related to the problem setting (e.g., after having bargained for a toy bus, boy is shown driving happily around with the bus).
We hypothesized that both normal children as well as children with autism would show generalization by producing alternative solutions on nontrained problems. We also wanted to contrast the learning rates of children with autism and normal children in nontrained problem situations.