First-Person Video Modeling as a Way of Teaching Imitation of Children with Autism

The article discusses the problem of the basic factors of ASD: the deficit in the Theory of Mind (ToM) as the ability to represent Self-Other relationship, or violation of the ability to simulate, as the ability to transfer the perspective of Other’s action into the prospect of their own actions. It is hypothesized that the first-person video surveillance technique (with the instructor’s and the student's hands visible) will be more effective in teaching imitation of children with ASD than the third-person video surveillance method (where the instructor and the student are seen). The study involved 28 children attending classes with psychologists and speech pathologists (ages: 4, 10 up to 7, 4 years; 24 children were diagnosed with ASD, 4 – atypical autism). At the first stage, the level of motor simulation skills (ABLLS-R test) was evaluated-3 times with an interval of 1 week. On the second stage, three groups (9 people) were equalized at the level of development of imitation. One group was trained "third-person", the second – "first-person", the third – control was trained according to the standard program. All studied the same time. For each subject conducted 4 classes (2 times a week). At the third stage, the level of motor skills measured 3 times with an interval of 1 week. The processing took into account the parameters of the mean, median, mode and standard deviation. The results of the study showed significant effectiveness of third-person training. The shift of the average value in "third-person training" and "first-person training" was 3 and 8 units respectively.