Persuasive text construction in a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder: a descriptive study.

In this paper we describe an intervention that aimed at improving the ability of producing persuasive texts in a 12 year-old Italian child with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder without intellectual disability. The intervention is based upon the SRSD (Self-Regulated Strategy Development) approach, as described in Asaro-Saddler & Bak's work (2012). The aim was to build a set of cognitive strategies that are essential to the effectiveness of a persuasive text. Two procedures, POW+TREE were used. Each letter of the acronym describes a subtask : Pick your ideas, Organize my notes, Write and say more + Topic sentence, Reasons, Explanations, Ending sentence (Graham & Harris, 1989). This approach seems well suited to autistic population as it addresses some of the major difficulties they could have in this task using some of the most common strong points in ASD like memory, detail-oriented perception and learning skills developed on topic of interest. Results showed an increased use of pragmatic-oriented language, in quantitative (e.g. more arguments) and qualitative terms (e.g. overall efficacy and consistency).