Incidental Teaching of Conversational Skills for Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

This article describes a process for the incidental teaching of conversation skills to students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in inclusive settings. The incidental teaching of conversation skills is an effective naturalistic intervention for assisting students with ASD to improve their social communication skills. Special educators and other stakeholders can implement this strategy by following the RACTF process: 1) recruit and prepare team members, 2) assess and identify target conversational skills, 3) identify natural cueing conditions and times to focus on target skills, 4) introduce and teach the target skills, and 5) fade prompts and practice the target skills in new settings. By improving the conversation skills of students with ASD, students have a higher likelihood of establishing peer relationships and becoming engaged, active participants in the classroom and other school environments.

Mr. Bautista and Ms. Keaton co-teach an inclusive third-grade class at Walker Elementary School in a midsize town. The class includes children from diverse backgrounds, including five children from the Pacific Islands, four children from Mexico, and nine children whose families have lived in the town for years. One student, Douglas, moved with his family from the Marshall Islands, where the school district diagnosed him with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Douglas was a strong learner with a solid memory and a powerful desire to investigate the life of insects. He was passionate about them and scoured books, videos, and magazines. He regularly implored his father to catch insects for him so he could build a terrarium.

Although Douglas enjoyed academic tasks and followed the classroom routines and procedures, he struggled to engage in reciprocal communication with peers and adults. He seldom interacted with others in the classroom, often sat alone at lunch, and played alone at recess. He responded to others when asked a direct question but seldom initiated conversations with others around him. When he did talk with others, he dominated the conversation by talking only about his favorite topics.

Recently, Douglas stood behind the third-grade general education teacher, Mr. Bautista, in the hallway before class and shuffled a deck of picture cards in his hand as he waited for the class to begin. Mr. Bautista regarded Douglas’s proximity as a sign of his intent to talk with him about the cards. When Mr. Bautista prompted Douglas to tell him about the cards, Douglas began a lengthy monologue describing each of the specific insects pictured on the cards. Douglas first identified the insect by its scientific name, kingdom, phylum, class, superorder, and order. Then he listed a series of facts specific to each insect on the card without pausing as he rapidly flipped each card under the deck. Mr. Bautista estimated the pack held at least 50 different picture cards, and Douglas seemed intent on describing and sharing facts about each of them. When the bell rang signaling the start of class, Mr. Bautista prompted Douglas to take his seat. Douglas became visibly agitated, repeating that he had more insects to tell him about. Ms. Keaton, the special education co-teacher, explained that Douglas could talk about the insects later and directed him to take his seat. Douglas appeared disappointed and did not interact with his classmates or teachers for the remainder of the morning.

“Although individuals with ASD may display a willingness to communicate, their difficulty with pragmatic language skills can isolate them from peers (Kelly et al., 2018).

Mr. Bautista and Ms. Keaton recognized Douglas’s desire to share information and viewed the incident as a positive step in his social communicative interaction. However, they also recognized the need to teach Douglas the conversational skills for initiating conversations and turn taking during a conversation. Mr. Bautista and Ms. Keaton decided to hold a team meeting to discuss how they might support Douglas’s conversational skill development within the classroom.

Two distinguishing characteristics of ASD are social communication deficits and persistent and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Consequently, children with ASD may struggle with pragmatic language skills, which allow an individual to speak intelligibly, behave appropriately, and understand the perspective of others (Lam & Yeung, 2012). Although individuals with ASD may display a willingness to communicate, their difficulty with pragmatic language skills can isolate them from peers (Kelly et al., 2018). In general, their verbal communication may lack cohesive devices, turn taking, topic maintenance, lack of initiation or appropriate responding, resistance to topic changes by others, and weaknesses in perspective taking. The literature describes their conversations as often containing irrelevant details that can seem one-sided and stilted. The nature of their communication can interfere with establishing relationships, limit their interactions with peers, and lead to higher-risk problems in mental health during adolescence (Jackson et al., 2018). These difficulties pervade social interactions and negatively impact social emotional development, academic learning, and functional independence (Parsons et al., 2017). Early and continuous intervention in these areas throughout the student’s education is crucial for improving social communication skills.

Naturalistic Behavior Intervention in Applied Behavior Analysis

Interventions using applied behavior analysis (ABA) are prominent in the literature and practices of clinicians working with children who have ASD. The most efficient and efficacious ABA communication interventions depend upon validated positive outcomes and generalization of skills across settings, contexts, and people. Although the need for generalization remains crucial, explicit details for how to program for generalization often remain ambiguous within the literature (Spencer & Higbee, 2012; Whalon et al., 2015). One seminal article, by Stokes and Baer (1977), defined different categories for generalization programming, of which “introducing natural maintaining contingencies” appears to hold the most promise for generalizing language and communication behaviors. These techniques include using natural rather than artificial rewards, child-preferred materials, and reinforcement of approximations in more naturalistic contexts (Lane et al., 2016).

Naturalistic behavior interventions that encompass several ABA techniques (e.g., socially significant goals, shaping, fading, discrimination training, and errorless learning) hold to scientifically valid operant conditioning strategies (Ingersoll et al., 2012). Naturalistic behavior interventions take place in natural settings, such as the home, school, and larger community. These interventions allow students to generalize their learned skills across context and settings (Lane et al., 2020). Teaching in the natural environment where cues continually change yields better generalization and decreases the need to directly teach individual skills in multiple settings (Spencer & Higbee, 2012). Children also learn more rapidly when there is a relationship between a communicative response and a reward (Lane et al., 2020). For example, a student might be rewarded for verbally identifying a particular toy and receive the toy as the reward rather than a piece of candy or points toward a token economy award chart. Moreover, naturalistic interventions promote social development when they involve interactional exchanges between the student and adult and the student and peers (Ingersoll et al., 2012). Naturalistic behavior interventions such as incidental teaching can be applied and implemented within the school context and reduce the student’s dependence on prompts, foster more natural-sounding language, and diminish responses to everyday distractions (Kamps et al., 2017).

Incidental Teaching as a Strategy for Supporting Communication

Incidental teaching comprises interactions between an adult or peer and a student that occur naturally in everyday situations. The adult or peer uses these interactions to transmit information or assist the student toward development of a targeted skill (Kamps et al., 2017). In particular, incidental teaching has been demonstrated to be an effective strategy for improving social communication skills (Rittenhouse-Cea & Cho, 2019). Whenever the student shows an interest in something within the environment, that interest becomes the context for teaching. The teacher structures the environment around the preferences of the student and uses the student’s preferences to trigger a request or initiation of social communication. Comments and questions from the student can also begin an incidental teaching moment. For example, in the opening vignette about Douglas, his interest was insects. Using an incidental teaching episode, insects become the topic and this provides an opportunity for the teacher or adult to teach new pragmatic language skills.

“The more people who can assist in the incidental teaching methods, the more rapidly learning will occur and generalize to new settings (Lane et al., 2020).

When used as a strategy to support the development of social communication skills, incidental teaching involves the selective arrangement of the environment to elicit a conversation while addressing specific language targets appropriate to the student’s skills, interests, and age (Rittenhouse-Cea & Cho, 2019). Teachers respond to the student initiations with requests to elaborate or use a targeted conversation skill. They provide reinforcement for the student’s communicative attempts and provide access to the student’s interests. Incidental teaching incorporates learning principles and relies on ABA techniques, such as modeling, shaping, and reinforcement, to teach new skills in natural conversational settings (Ryan et al., 2008). Because incidental teaching involves everyday situations and engages the student’s interests, it addresses motivation and the generalization of skills (Koegel et al., 2010). It is also straightforward to use in the classroom, provided that the general educator and special educator work in tandem to define the target skills, investigate the preferred interests of the student, show a positive and accepting stance toward the student, and commit to reinforcing target behaviors across different settings and situations during the day.

“Because incidental teaching involves everyday situations and engages the student’s interests, it addresses motivation and the generalization of skills (Koegel et al., 2010).

To better describe a process for the incidental teaching of conversation skills to students with ASD, we will use the case study of Douglas from the opening vignette. The following sections outline procedures for using incidental teaching in inclusive settings to target specific conversational skills for students with ASD. Special educators and other stakeholders can implement this strategy by following the RACTF process: (1) recruit and prepare team members, (2) assess and identify target conversational skills, (3) identify natural cueing conditions and times to focus on target skills, (4) introduce and teach the target skills, and (5) fade prompts and practice the target skills in new settings. Figure 1 provides an overview of the steps described.

Figure 1

Steps for using incidental teaching for conversational skills

Step 1: Recruit and Prepare Team Members

Special educators play an important role in establishing the framework for using incidental teaching procedures to support social communication skills. The role of the special educator in applying incidental teaching is twofold. First, the teacher recruits team members for the intervention program, including family members, peers (as appropriate), teachers, and service providers who work with the student across various settings in the school. The more people who can assist in the incidental teaching methods, the more rapidly learning will occur and generalize to new settings (Lane et al., 2020). An advantage of incidental teaching involves the ease by which teachers, family members, and peers can learn and use the strategies. The likelihood of success increases when volunteers show a genuine desire to engage with the student, possess a positive and accepting attitude, and commit to use only positive reinforcement.

The second priority for the special educator focuses on preparing team members to collaborate effectively and use the techniques consistently across multiple settings. The special educator can coordinate team meetings to discuss target skills and outline the steps for the intervention (see following sections). Additionally, the special educator can conduct interviews with the student and the family that can provide information about the student’s interests, which can help define the topics of conversation and the reinforcers. As the techniques and reinforcers are implemented, the special educator can serve as the facilitator and coach for all team members.

Douglas’s third-grade special education co-teacher, Ms. Keaton, identified incidental teaching as a potentially effective strategy for supporting Douglas’s communication skills. She first made a list of potential participants in the intervention. She wanted to identify a range of participants who interacted with Douglas in various inclusive settings, including Douglas’s third-grade general education co-teacher (Mr. Bautista), the speech-language therapist (Mr. Landmark), and Douglas’s mother and father. Ms. Keaton then convened a meeting to discuss target skills and outline steps for the intervention.

Step 2: Assess and Identify Target Conversational Skills

In order to determine appropriate target goals for conversation skills, team members should review the student’s most recent evaluations and progress reports, specifically examining the areas of speech and language. If additional information is needed, the team can collect data using observational checklists across different settings and contexts. For instance, the Children’s Communication Checklist (Bishop, 2006) can be used in screening and identification of pragmatic language skills. Single-page pragmatic checklists can also be used to identify needed conversational target skills for the student (Goberis et al., 2012).

After conducting observations of Douglas across multiple school settings, the team determined that Douglas used proximity to signal his intention to begin a conversation. This strategy worked only with adults and was largely ineffective with peers. The strategy also appeared to arise from a lack of knowledge about common greetings. As a result, Douglas often appeared isolated from his peers during nonacademic times and remained outside of collaborative group work in the general education classroom.

After gathering and examining the evaluation data, the team’s next step is to identify target conversational skill(s) for the incidental teaching intervention. The identified target skills should reflect authentic, meaningful social communication skills used within the school and home environment (Koegel et al., 2010; Rittenhouse-Cea & Cho, 2019). The target skills should be attainable based on the student’s current skill level and time frame for intervention.

The team collaboratively identified two target skills: (a) initiating conversations and (b) taking turns in conversations. The team reasoned that initiating a conversation could help Douglas to gain entrance into ongoing conversations or begin conversations with adults and peers. Additionally, the team believed teaching Douglas to take turns in conversations would help him to build relationships with peers and adults. The team selected the phrases to teach Douglas based upon everyday talk of his peers and more formal greetings with adults. The initial greetings, “Hi, [peer name],” and “Hi, Ms. or Mr. [adult name],” were chosen as target phrases for gaining attention. It was also important that Douglas followed up the greeting with a question, thus setting the stage for a longer conversation. When teaching turn taking in conversations, the team built on Douglas’s foundational concept knowledge of pausing. Because Douglas understood the concept of “pause” from playing video games, the team believed Douglas could apply this to turn taking in conversations.

Step 3: Identify Natural Cuing Conditions and Times to Focus on Target Skills

When teaching in natural settings, teams need to identify the natural cuing conditions that signal a need for a pragmatic device, such as a greeting. A natural cue for a greeting can occur when a person goes unrecognized or unnoticed when standing near others in a conversation. When one is overlooked, a greeting serves as an attention-getting device. Likewise, a natural cue during a conversation occurs when the speaker pauses, which signals an opportunity for the listener to comment, question, or acknowledge their interest to continue.

When planning to use incidental teaching to support social communication skills, the team will need to identify times and conditions that naturally support the target objectives. For example, informal conversations can occur between the time students first enter the classroom and the designated time for class to begin. This might occur during homeroom, the time from unloading all the buses until the start of school, during lunch period, during transition times, or during collaborative work times. Initially, the conversational context might include one speaker and one listener, thus making the exchange simple rather than complex. With only one speaker and listener, natural cueing can also be emphasized.

Douglas’s team identified times and conditions that supported conversations with both peers and adults at school. They identified two times in the general education classroom to support conversational skills: (a) the 20-minute independent reading block, when students selected books to read and discuss with their peers and teachers, and (b) the 15-minute creative writing block, during which students selected their own writing topics and often discussed ideas with their peers and teachers. By selecting these times, the team was hoping to provide Douglas an opportunity to improve his social communication skills with both adults and peers. Additionally, both times provided opportunities for students to engage in their specific interests. This would allow the teachers to motivate and positively reinforce Douglas through his preferred topic of insects.

Step 4: Introduce and Teach the Target Skills

After selecting the natural cueing conditions and times to focus on target skills, the special educator can use these conditions as an opportunity to introduce and teach the target skills. Teachers should select one skill at a time to introduce and teach, moving on to the next skill when the student has demonstrated acquisition and maintenance of the first skill. When teaching in natural settings, the teacher should establish conditions that allow for the student to focus on the target skill without being overwhelmed with environmental distractions. This may include teaching the skill in a small-group or one-on-one interaction within the classroom. The teacher should introduce and teach the skill in ways that motivate the student to learn the skill and practice while being positively reinforced within the natural environment.

The team decided to initially focus on the target skill of initiating conversations. Ms. Keaton believed that introducing the skill during structured academic learning times would provide the best opportunity for success. During third-grade independent reading block, Ms. Keaton and Mr. Bautista identified a number of books related to insects and stacked the books near Mr. Bautista’s desk. When Douglas’s group was called to select two books for independent reading, Mr. Bautista made a point of thumbing through the insect books while talking with Ms. Keaton. Douglas noticed the books and stood next to Mr. Bautista without talking. Mr. Bautista turned to Douglas and prompted him, saying, “Hi, Douglas. Please say ‘Hi, Mr. Bautista,’ and ask me a question. You can say, ‘Can I see that book?’ or ‘Is that book about insects?’” After two prompts, Douglas repeated the target skill and Mr. Bautista gave him the book. A similar process was implemented during the 15-minute creative writing block. By the fifth consecutive day of the incidental teaching strategy, Douglas did not require any prompts before initiating conversations in these situations.

As students progress in their social communication skill development, the team can increase the types and complexity of conversational skills. In the example of Douglas, taking turns in conversations is a more complex skill. Like Douglas, many children with ASD get entrenched in one-sided conversations about their favorite topic. They do not pick up on the social cues of pausing during a conversation to let the listener take a turn. This behavior may also be related to the theory of mind (ToM)—the ability to attribute desires, beliefs, feelings, and intentions to oneself and to other people (Happé, 1993). According to ToM, a person can take another’s perspective and can therefore make behavioral predictions about how people will act. Students with ASD show difficulty with taking another person’s perspective, thus making it hard to know that the listener wants to speak and therefore, to pause in the conversation (Perner & Lang, 1999). To teach a more complex conversational skill, such as turn taking, visual prompts may be a useful strategy. Although verbal prompts can also be used, research shows verbal prompting seldom generalizes to different settings, and teachers find it difficult to fade (West & Billingsley, 2005).

Ms. Keaton made three visual prompt cards indicating “stop,” “pause,” and “go,” as displayed in Figure 2.

Figure 2

Conversational turn-taking prompt cards

At a one-on-one conference during the 15-minute creative writing block, Ms. Keaton introduced the cards to Douglas and used gestures to show “stop,” “pause,” and “go.” She explained that in order to have a conversation, they each had to take turns talking, and the cards would remind Douglas to pause and allow her to take a turn talking. Ms. Keaton then initiated a conversation with Douglas about his creative writing project on winged insects that sting. After telling Douglas two things she knew about winged insects that sting, she paused and held up the “go” card for Douglas. After he gave two statements, she raised the prompt card to “pause” and picked up the conversation herself. Following multiple exchanges, she held up the “stop” card and concluded the conversation by telling Douglas that it was an enjoyable and interesting conversation. Douglas was then allowed 10 minutes to feed the class lizard and look through materials at the science lab station, both of which were things he loved to do.

Step 5: Fade Prompts and Practice the Target Skills in New Settings

As the student gains proficiency and confidence in using the target skills in a variety of settings, the special educator should begin fading prompts. Decisions to reduce prompts can be difficult. Just as one designs a hierarchy of least-to-most prompts, the hierarchy for fading works in the opposite manner. The first consideration for fading involves the information load within the prompt. Each prompt carries several items of information. For example, the visual prompt to pause included the what, how, and when in the conversation. “Pause” meant to stop for a brief time in conversation until the other person took a turn to speak. Each visual prompt carried additional information.

When deciding which prompt to fade, the teacher will want to fade the use of cards with the least amount of information. Thus, in the example of Douglas, the first visual prompt to eliminate would be the “go” sign for speaking. Because the focus student remains motivated to talk about the topic, the speaker’s pause should be a strong-enough natural cue for the student to speak. The teacher will want to observe and assess the ease with which the student performs without the visual prompt. For example, does the student respond quickly to the prompt? Does the student anticipate the prompt? What is the error rate on the most recent trials? Does the student demonstrate behavioral indicators of frustration? The decision to select which prompts to fade and how quickly depends on the teacher’s judgment and the available performance data. The key element would be to ensure that the student will continue to have success when a prompt is faded. Fading should involve escalating the student’s involvement by gradually decreasing the control exercised by the teacher over the response.

“Students with ASD show difficulty with taking another person’s perspective, thus making it hard to know that the listener wants to speak and therefore, to pause in the conversation (Perner & Lang, 1999).

When Douglas could use turn taking successfully after 5 days, Ms. Keaton faded the visual prompts. Fading involved teaching Douglas to respond to a gestural sign from the listener, who held up one finger in front of Douglas. Then the speaker stated two facts about the topic and paused, looking expectantly toward Douglas. Figure 3 illustrates the fading hierarchy.

Figure 3

Example fading hierarchy for turn taking during conversations

The natural cues, such as the listener breaking eye contact or turning their head away, indicated that the listener was becoming disengaged in the conversation and it was time for Douglas to relinquish his turn in the conversation. A final natural cue was for the listener to leave the conversation. As the prompts were gradually faded, Douglas demonstrated his ability to make two statements on the topic and pause for the conversational partner to add information or ask a question.

As students gain proficiency in new conversational skills, the teacher can shift the context for instruction to other natural settings within the school or community. In the example of Douglas, the incidental teaching strategies initially focused on exchanges between the student and his two co-teachers, Ms. Keaton and Mr. Bautista. Once Douglas demonstrated consistent use of the target conversation skills with the teachers, the next context for instruction could be with his peers.

During third-grade independent reading block, Ms. Keaton conferenced with Douglas and one other student to discuss their book selections. She first modeled how to initiate a conversation by saying, “Hello, Douglas,” and waited a few seconds for Douglas to respond. He greeted Ms. Keaton and asked what books he could read. However, he did not speak to the other student. Ms. Keaton then greeted the other student and prompted her to say hello to Douglas. When Douglas did not respond, Ms. Keaton provided a verbal reminder and modeled the greeting. Douglas then said, “Hi, Vivian,” to the other student. Ms. Keaton then engaged both students in a conversation about their books while using the “stop,” “pause,” and “go” conversation cards with each student to moderate the conversation. Similar practice opportunities were held each day during the independent reading block and during the creative writing block. As Douglas’s conversation initiation and turn-taking skills improved, the visual and verbal prompts were gradually faded.

Final Thoughts

The incidental teaching of conversation skills is an effective naturalistic intervention for assisting students with ASD to improve their social communication skills. Special educators and other stakeholders can implement this strategy by following the RACTF process: (1) recruit and prepare team members, (2) assess and identify target conversational skills, (3) identify natural cueing conditions and times to focus on target skills, (4) introduce and teach the target skills, and (5) fade prompts and practice the target skills in new settings. By improving the conversation skills of students with ASD, students have a higher likelihood of establishing peer relationships and becoming engaged, active participants in the classroom and other school environments.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID id

Nancy Stockall

William Blackwell, Assistant Professor and Nancy Stockall, Professor, School of Teaching and Learning, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX.

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