SAGE Learning Lab

It is important for young children with ASD to have back-and-forth exchanges with others, which can occur during play activities, everyday routines, and conversations. Several research studies demonstrate that turn-taking supports back-and-forth interactions and may help to enhance requesting, commenting, and toy play skills. Turn-taking can also be helpful when the child is displaying repetitive patterns of behavior. Using the child’s strong interest in repeating the same action over and over may function as a way to motivate the child to practice new (or novel) skills. In this course, you will learn how turn-taking (or balanced turns) can be used as a shared control strategy to help you maintain access to the reinforcing materials or activities during the child’s turn and then use these as reinforcement dependent on the child’s next response. You can also use this strategy to model expanded and more complex behaviors during your turn. Taking turns during activities automatically gives the child opportunities to request, imitate, and see actions mirrored by you…thus receiving reinforcement when it is his turn again.