Development of Behavior Intervention Plan to Enhance Language and Social Communication Skills of Students with Mild Autism Spectrum Disorder

Enhancing the language and social communication skills is essential to improve the positive behavior and reduce the inappropriate behavior of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Thus, an intervention plan on these skills is needed, which the study attempted to do to help students with ASD. Using descriptive-developmental approach, 20 participants purposively selected (5 parents, 3 special education teachers, 2 regular teachers handling students with mild ASD, and 10 behavior therapists) in different schools and a therapy center in Quezon City answered a checklist on the observed behaviors of students with autism in terms of language and social communication skills.

Results revealed that most of the behaviors in language and social communication skills indicated in the checklist were always observed, which then became the basis of the researcher to develop target behavior, strategies and reinforcement needed in the BIP. The Behavior Intervention Plan was validated by the three experts in the field of Psychology and Special Education. Ten among the participants tried out the Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP) to their students with mild autism for two weeks, and validated the content using the checklist made by the researcher.

Based on the results, the developed Behavior Intervention Plan was deemed efficient to enhance the language and social communication skills of students with mild autism spectrum disorder. Parents also found the plan very suitable for they were able to know the different strategies they could apply at home; likewise, regular teachers, special education teachers, and behavior therapists found it helpful to improve the behavior of the students. It is recommended that the Behavior Intervention Plan be used as an additional tool to the current Individualize educational plan that targets behavior through enhancement of language and social communication skills, and further studies to develop more strategies that will help students with Autism Spectrum Disorder.