Seleção de comportamentos entrelaçados inclusivos de crianças através de jogos cooperativos em salas de aula com crianças com autismo.

Abstract

In education, social interaction among neurotypical and children with developmental disabilities figure in the discussion of inclusive education. One of such disabilities is the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). ASD is a global developmental disability and has as one of its characteristics the deficit in social interactions. To make inclusive education a cultural practice, we consider important to focus interventions in the relation among peers. As in the school environment we are dealing with behavior of people in groups, we suggest the importance of analyzing interlocked behavioral contingencies and the effects of such interactions in the participants of the group. We use the concept f metacontingencies as describing the process of cultural selection. We conducted this study in the 2nd grade of a private elementary school in the city of Belém-PA. The participants were nine children, two of them diagnosed with ASD. The research sessions, three baseline observations and seven intervention sessions, collecting data both in the classroom and in the playground. In the intervention sessions we collected data in the playground, with 15 minutes of cooperative games and then observing free play for the next 20 minutes in the break. The study design followed a reversion between conditions with the cooperative games and no intervention. Associated to the games, if the children kept everyone in the game (including the children with autism), the group would receive a “positive reinforcement token”, and if they managed to repeat that in the next session they would receive a “mysterious reinforcer”. The objective of the research was to evaluate the effect of the cooperative games associated with the cultural consequence in interlocked behavioral contingencies that included inclusive behavior by the neurotypical children targeting the children with ASD. We collected data in physical, verbal and gestures of help directed to the children with ASD during the games and in the break following the intervention. There was an increase in all kinds of target inclusive behaviors both during the games and also during the break. We discuss that the games were effective in selecting inclusive behaviors.