Smart Shaping to Improve the Clarity of Speech in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Autism is a neurobiological developmental disorder that emerges in early childhood, typically before the age of three, and is characterized by deficits in eye contact, communication, social interaction, repetitive behaviors, restricted interests, and other associated impairments, without appropriate and timely intervention, these deficits tend to persist over time. One challenge in intervention for children with ASD is difficulty producing clearly intelligible whole words, particularly among children who can imitate syllables but have difficulty combining them into complete target words. This study aimed to develop and examine the use of Smart Shaping, a structured instructional procedure within the Smart Applied Behavior Analysis (Smart ABA) framework, to improve clear word imitation in children with ASD. A single-case case series design with repeated measurement across baseline, intervention, and maintenance phases was implemented with two children with ASD aged 3–7 years who showed marked difficulty producing whole-word vocal imitations at baseline. Smart Shaping was developed through expert discussion and validated using Aiken’s V coefficient (V = 0.96). The intervention was implemented intensively, and child responses were recorded trial by trial using the Smart Measurement system (Smart ME), accompanied by treatment integrity monitoring and independent supervisory review of selected sessions. Visual analysis showed improvement in clear word imitation in both participants, with performance maintained over six weeks. These findings provide initial support for the use of Smart Shaping in cases of word imitation difficulty in children with ASD, particularly when individual syllables are already produced clearly but whole-word production remains unclear.