Children with autism spectrum disorder often demonstrate difficulty communicating with others, and this may affect the extent to which they can engage in contextually appropriate language during play. This study examined the effects of a social script-training intervention using generic picture cues on the number of contextually appropriate play…

We observed three children with autism spectrum disorder during structured play dates in which play partners displayed interest or disinterest in the toys with which they were playing. We then taught subjects to identify play partners' preferences and to make appropriate toy offers using a multiple-exemplar training package consisting of rules,…

Script-fading procedures have been shown to be effective for teaching children with autism to initiate and participate in social interactions without vocal prompts from adults. In previous script and script-fading research, however, there has been no demonstration of a generalized repertoire of vocal interactions under the control of naturally…

A multiple baseline design across participants was used to demonstrate the effects of a script-training procedure on the peer-to-peer communication of 3 children with autism spectrum disorder during group play with peers. Both scripted and unscripted initiations as well as responses to peers increased for all 3 participants. Stimulus…

The purpose of this study was to teach empathetic responding to 4 children with autism. Instructors presented vignettes with dolls and puppets demonstrating various types of affect and used prompt delay, modeling, manual prompts, behavioral rehearsals, and reinforcement to teach participants to perform empathy responses. Increases in empathetic…

Four young children with severe and moderate handicaps were taught to generalize play responses. Across the four participants, training to generalize within-toy sets resulted in complete between-class generalization in 11 sets, partial generalization in 3 sets, and no generalization in 2 sets. (Author/CL)

Two children (ages four and five) with mild developmental delays and no appropriate toy play were trained individually on one topography for each toy. Previously reinforced topographies of toy play were then placed on extinction, resulting in the induction of untrained topographies. (Author/DB)