Module 5 - Autism Spectrum Disorder

The Effects of Video Self-Modeling on Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The article I read for this week’s posting was about video self-modeling on children with autism spectrum disorder. I have to admit, I was very excited when I came across this article and it didn’t let me down! It was a great read. I recently learned about video modeling as an evidence based practice for children with autism and has been something that I have wanted to incorporate into my classroom. 

In this article the authors first explained that autism spectrum disorder comes with a wide range of impairments. Individuals with autism are noted to have impairments that include verbal and non-verbal communication, social interactions, resistance to environmental change and restricted behaviors and interests. In addition to this children with autism can have deficits in attention behavior, eye contact and processing of social stimuli. The deficit in communication is by far the most prominent. There are many effective strategies to working with children with autism and for many years others as models has made a huge impact. Bandura (1977) stated in research that children are most likely to attend to a model they view as competent and who is similar to themselves in some way. 

With the advancement of technology modeling has also taken on quite an advancement and now includes the use of video and using video modeling with children with autism has proven to by fairly successful. There are four main reasons why video modeling has become so successful in working with children with autism. First of all, video modeling will use a competent and similar model. Second, video modeling decreases the need for attention and language. The child only needs to view a small spatial area and listen to a minimum amount of language. Another reason is because video modeling  reduces the importance of social interactions and finally, the motivation of watching a video may be inciting enough in itself to help the child.  

However, like with any strategy when working with children, video modeling can have its disadvantages. Some disadvantages to using video modeling is that you need to use children when presenting to children and parents may not sign off rights to this. Also when filming for desired behaviors it requires a lot of time and follow ups may be needed. Because of these disadvantages Bandura concluded that seeing oneself perform tasks successfully will provide the best feedback and will strengthen self confidence. These is referred to as “self-as-model”. This modeling is also referred to as Video Self-Modeling (VSM). 

The process of VSM is to record the child maximizing a specific skill and then edit the videos to remove unwanted behaviors or errors. When showing the video repeatedly you are showing the child only the desired behavior. Studies on VSM have shown that that this type of modeling can be linked to successful communication, behavior and academic performance in children with autism spectrum disorder. 

While reading this article it has really inspired me to team up with our school behavior specialist and work on possibly using video self-modeling. I have student who has a very difficult time walking down the hallway at times and not performing compulsive rituals. However, there are times that he can walk down the hall just fine with his hands and his sides and continue to move forward all the way to his destination. I believe that videoing the positive, desired way of walking down the hallway, and showing him this before we leave the classroom each time, can lead to a decrease in the compulsive rituals he takes part in. 

Citation: 

Schmidt, C., & Bonds-Raacke, J. (2013). The effects of video self-modeling on children with autism spectrum disorder. International Journal of Special Education, 28(3), 121-     

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