Many children with autism struggle with emotion processing, which affects their ability to respond in a social situation appropriately. Interventions for emotion recognition typically require the individual to tact or match photos of static facial expressions without teaching the emotion's facial or body language stimulus characteristics. Additionally, most interventions show little generalization effects or plan for generalization of emotion recognition. Due to children's issues with over-selectivity and focusing only on specific facial parts, such as the mouth, emotion recognition training should teach target emotions' stimulus characteristics. Since generalization is a known difficulty for children with autism, a new approach for teaching emotion recognition is needed that can produce generalized responses. The current study used a within-participant multiple baseline design across emotions to examine the effects of using picture books to teach three children with autism correct emotional responding when viewing context emotion cards and video clip scenarios of real people. Three target emotions were taught to each participant contextually through picture books by breaking down the emotions' features. Additionally, this study implemented generalization strategies to increase the likelihood of appropriate social reaction responses when viewing video clip scenarios of positive and negative social situations. Participants also completed Narrative Language Measures probes to explore possible generalization effects. A video conferencing platform was utilized for two participants, while one participant received direct in-person book training. Results indicate that the picture book intervention may be effective in helping children with autism improve their emotional understanding that may generalize to social situations. Social validity measures by teachers and parents indicate possible improvement in social skills and problem behavior. Discussion of the current study reviews findings, implications, and possible future research. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]
