An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of the Comic Strip Conversation Intervention with Secondary Aged pupils with Autistic Spectrum Disorder

Comic Strip Conversations (CSCs) (Gray 1994) can be used to improve the social skills of individuals on the autism spectrum as well as pupils with other learning and/or speech difficulties.

Very little rigorous research employing experimental designs has been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of CSCs with secondary aged pupils.

This study aimed to overcome the shortcomings of previous research and evaluate the CSCs as an intervention to improve specific problematic behaviours of secondary aged pupils with a diagnosis of ASD.

In addition to evaluating the intervention, the study aimed to ascertain whether or not including a written (visual) action plan or having a discussion about actions/solutions at the end of the CSC would make a difference to the effectiveness of the intervention and whether or not this correlated with the participants' visual and verbal skills (assessed using the British Ability Scales Second Edition).

A total of 8 participants ranging from the ages of 11 years to 14 years took part in the evaluation. A multiple baseline design across behaviours was used resulting in a 16 week intervention. Structured observations were used to observe each pupils' target behaviours in various settings which were then scored and used to measure change during and post-intervention. Teachers', parents' and pupils' views were sought to ascertain the social skills of the participants pre and post intervention using questionnaires and rating scales.

The researcher visually inspected the data using graphs to identify themes and patterns. Points of non-overlapping data (PND), points exceeding the median (PEM) and percentage of zero data (PZD) were calculated.

Results showed that the intervention was effective in reducing the target behaviour (or in some cases promoting a positive behaviour) in 4 out of the 8 cases. In these cases the intervention had a moderate to very effective result. The type of action plan (visual or verbal) did not make a difference to the effectiveness of the intervention.