Carolyne Jones (behavioural psychologist): So one of the techniques that psychologists can use to help children with autism develop their social skills is called social scripts. So this involves thinking about a particular sentence or 2 that you’d like the child to use in a situation where normally they get a bit stuck. This might be, for example, greeting their teacher in the morning. So you’re sitting down with the child, thinking about how they would like to greet the teacher. Writing it down and then having a practice role-play with an adult or another child. Using that script in a pretend scenario. And also giving feedback of what worked well. What didn’t work so well. What they could do different next time.

So the script might be, ‘Good Morning Suzie. How was your breakfast today?’ And then working towards using that script in the morning when they come to school and making sure that the teacher gives lots of positive reinforcement for the child using that script.

I think it’s really important that when we’re looking at things like social scripts that we can also encourage children with autism who obviously find it difficult at times to be flexible and not become rigid to also think about ways that they could expand on that initial script. So the script can be like a starting point and then once they hear other people in that situation using their own scripts of sort that they can change that initial starting point and add to it. Take things away. Introducing things on a different day for something unusual happening that they can incorporate that into the script so the script can be like a starting point of entering into the particular situation.