Why Use Naturalistic Intervention?
Motivating a toddler with ASD to initiate communication and engage in social interactions can be very challenging. Identifying and building upon a toddler’s interests and working within daily routines and activities offer opportunities to increase meaningful engagement. Naturalistic intervention provides a way for just about anyone in a toddler’s life to learn strategies for interacting with the toddler in any setting where the child spends time. The intervention starts with the toddler’s interests, is planned around baseline data, and provides strategies to meet targeted behaviors.
Naturalistic interventions also provide guidance in structuring environments to elicit targeted behaviors.
EXAMPLE
If the target is for the toddler to initiative a request, then having preferred toys in a toddler’s visual space but out of reach would motivate him/her to learn the targeted skill of “initiate a request.”
Through strategies such as modeling and time delay, the toddler will have opportunities to develop the skills necessary to reach the target behavior.