Young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often demonstrate delays in expressive communication, impacting their ability to independently function in typical environments. Individuals with ASD who develop expressive language during early childhood experience better outcomes later in life; therefore, examination of naturalistic language…

The study compared the effectiveness of a peer model and an adult model in teaching an expressive language task to four autistic boys (ages 7-10). Results indicated that all children learned from both models and few consistent differences occurred across the two conditions. Generalization and maintenance was also consistently high in both…