Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rasd Improvements in micro level indices of social communication following Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) Stav Berman b , Pamela Ventola a , Ilanit Gordon b,c, ⁎ a The Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University, CT, USA b Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel c The Gonda Brain Research Center, Bar Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel ARTICLE INFO Number of reviews completed is 3 Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) Microanalysis Social communication Vocalizations Verbalizations ABSTRACT Background: Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) is an evidence-based treatment for individuals with ASD that targets social communication skills, most notably social motivation. The aim of the current study was to map microanalytic changes in social communication during dyadic child- therapist interactions following a 16-week trial of PRT. We proposed that a microanalytic ap- proach would allow us to meticulously outline the dynamics of the “building blocks” of children’s discourse, stressing certain aspect that might go unnoticed in global methods of coding. We hypothesized that PRT would improve measures of linguistic social communication in children. Method: We utilized continuous microanalysis of behavior to explore changes in social com- munication during PRT sessions in 20 high-functioning children with ASD (ages 4–7 years). For each child, two videotaped PRT sessions – at the beginning and end of these 16 weeks – were coded for vocalizations and verbalizations. This allowed us to compare the amount, fluency, adequacy and reciprocity of social communication between child and therapist at the early versus final stages of PRT. Results: Compared to baseline, at endpoint, children increased their overall use of vocalizations as well as the congruency of their responses to those of the therapist. The amount of non-con- gruent responses also dropped significantly. Additionally, children improved in measures of conversational fluency and use of self-referential pronouns. Conclusions: These results provide a mapping of microanalytic changes in social and linguistic communication that occur during PRT and point to children’s improvement in social commu- nication behavior leading to greater social reciprocity and conversational synchrony following treatment. 1. Introduction The social motivation theory of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) (Chevallier, Kohls, Troiani, Brodkin, & Schultz, 2012) explains the core social deficit in ASD as a case of diminished social expertise. A moderated social interest deprives the developing child of social inputs and opportunities for social learning and social reciprocity, leading to deficits in social communication and social cognition (Chevallier et al., 2012). This early disruption leads to canalization in brain development, such that the typically devel- oping (TD) connections between brain areas responsible for social information processing are greatly altered. For example, Dubey, Ropar, and de Hamilton (2015) have shown that TD adults prefer social stimuli over non-social stimuli, but this preference is weaker https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2018.04.003 Received 10 October 2017; Received in revised form 19 March 2018; Accepted 2 April 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, 5290002, Israel. E-mail address: ilanit.gordon@biu.ac.il (I. Gordon). Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 51 (2018) 56–65 1750-9467/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T