Evaluating the Ability of the PBS Children’s Show Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood to Teach Skills to Two Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Figure 1 presents performance on target skills for both participants. Patrick’s performance (top two panels) improved only after watching episodes. For trying new foods, he began eating each new food placed in front of him during probes after the second viewing of the video. During the course of the study, he ate six new foods. During the baseline for stopping play, Patrick did not acknowledge the experimenter’s request, stop the activity, or approach the experimenter. The only exception was one session during which experimenters inadvertently removed Patrick’s favorite toys from the probe room (open circles in Fig. 1). That day he did not want to play, and so quickly left the room when prompted. After watching one episode, Patrick began stopping play with 100 % accuracy, and ended by stopping play four consecutive times.

Calvin’s behavior (bottom two panels) varied more, but also improved for both skills. During baseline, Calvin never put a bite of food to his mouth, chewed, or swallowed. After watching one episode, Calvin ate a bite of novel food. He watched the episode three times, after each of which he put at least one bite of every novel food in his mouth. Once into maintenance, his performance varied, but he ate nine total novel foods during and following intervention. For stopping play, Calvin never stopped his play activity during baseline. After watching episodes, his performance did not initially consistently change. At the sixth viewing, the experimenters instituted the attending contingency and his performance immediately improved. During maintenance, his performance was variable but higher than baseline.

For two young children with ASD, watching episodes of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood led to the acquisition of two new skills: trying new foods and stopping play. The results support earlier research showing children watching structured television shows can learn skills by watching those shows (e.g., Lauricella, et al., 2011; Wartella, et al., 2012), and extends that literature by showing children with ASD can learn the same way. The results also resemble positive outcomes seen in video modeling interventions with children with ASD (e.g., Ayres & Langone, 2005; Shukla-Mehta, et al., 2009). Given the many overlapping elements of those two interventions (clear descriptions of behavior, modeling of the appropriate behavior); the results may suggest the possibility of a shared mechanism of effect for both. Future research should directly compare traditional video modeling versus using episodes of television shows to explore the relative efficacy of the interventions.

Unlike most video modeling studies, the experimenters provided no interaction beyond the episode itself until the attending contingency with Calvin. Thus, live instruction, prompting, and reinforcement were not part of this intervention. The isolation of the episode from other teaching components allowed a more specific evaluation of the effects of episode alone to independently change behavior. Media effects literature and the video modeling literature both suggest that more and higher quality learning occurs with adult facilitation of the lessons; thus, it is possible that more positive results could be achieved with the incorporation of parent or experimenter mediation while watching the episode (e.g., parent prompting attention to target skills, asking questions, and prompting settings in which children could practice the skill).

The skills targeted here address two common issues for young children with ASD: picky eating and difficulty in transitions from preferred play activities. Results suggest that a popular, commonly available television show could facilitate effective interventions for those deficits for at least some children. Future research should explore the viability of other episodes targeting other skills to address common skill deficits among young children with ASD.

The results of this pilot study should be interpreted with caution. The experimenters did not evaluate maintenance of the learned skills extensively or measure generalization to the home environment. Additionally, both children were the same age and general level of functioning. It is unclear whether the intervention would be as effective for children who did not already have good language skills. Future studies should recruit a more diverse population of young children with ASD, include more target skills, evaluate longer-term maintenance, and measure generalization beyond the experimental setting.

While both participants showed clear changes in their behavior following intervention, it did not produce immediate effects. Both participants watched episodes multiple times. Calvin required an attending contingency to improve his performance on stopping play. Thus, to be effective, this type of intervention appears to require the child to sit and attend to the episode multiple times. This is similar to the video modeling literature, which suggests repeated exposure to the videos is important for effectiveness (Corbett & Abdullah, 2005). Future research should also explore whether parents, teachers, or peers acting as facilitators and prompters while watching the episodes leads to more immediate or durable change. Overall, the results of this brief study suggest episodes of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood may be useful tools to help children with ASD learn skills, especially as further research extends and clarifies the conditions under which that learning occurs.