Intraverbal tacts are an example of multiply controlled verbal behavior. More specifically, they are verbal responses under control of both a nonverbal (visual) stimulus (e.g., a green ball) and a verbal (auditory) stimulus (e.g., "What color?" vs. "What shape?"). Studies have shown that verbal behavior training can be arranged…

Rodriguez et al. (2022) discovered that teaching four component skills was sufficient to facilitate the emergence of intraverbal tacts across four applications with three participants. Our study replicated and evaluated an extension of this procedure that was directed at facilitating intraverbal tacts when a child learns the component skills but…

This study investigates how children aged two to eight years (N = 129) and adults (N = 29) use auditory and visual speech for word recognition. The goal was to bridge the gap between apparent successes of visual speech processing in young children in visual-looking tasks, with apparent difficulties of speech processing in older children from…

The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of teaching with graduated guidance on teaching the playing backgammon skill, which is one of the leisure skills, to children with "Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)". Three children with ASD participated in this research. A multiple probe design across the participants was used in…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have difficulty with personal hygiene skills, such as toothbrushing, yet there is a dearth of studies in this area demonstrating experimental control. We used a multiple-probe-across-participants design to evaluate the effectiveness of a treatment package that consisted of a picture activity…

The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is a popular augmentative and alternative communication intervention for individuals with developmental disabilities that includes six, sequential phases of instruction. We systematically reviewed published and unpublished single-case PECS studies for details about the percentage of participants…

Previous studies on skill acquisition have taught targets in stimulus sets composed of different numbers of stimuli. Although the rationale for selection of a stimulus set size is not clear, the number of target stimuli trained within a set is a treatment decision for which there is limited empirical support. The current investigation compared the…

It is still unknown whether visual illusion can bias motor performance in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) individuals. The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of visual illusion on performance in children with ASD in a far-aiming skill. In a within-subject design, participants (n = 20, IQ > 70, mean age: 10.15) performed golf putting…

The main purpose of this study was to systematically review and meta-analyse the single-case studies on the use of activity schedules with individuals with autism spectrum disorders. The other purposes were to describe the characteristics of activity schedule studies, assess the design standards of activity schedule studies, estimate the treatment…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulty generalizing from directly trained responses to untrained responses (i.e., emergent responding). In this study, we used a chain prompt combined with matrix training to teach 2 participants with ASD to tact 192 three-digit numerals. We used a multiple-baseline design across matrices to…

A common practice in tact training is to include a supplemental verbal stimulus (e.g., "What is it?") in addition to the presentation of a nonverbal discriminative stimulus. Previous literature has suggested that this supplemental verbal stimulus can impede acquisition and generalization relative to the presentation of the object alone,…

Despite its advantages, discrete-trial instruction (DTI) has been criticized for producing rote responding. Although there is little research supporting this claim, if true, this may be problematic given the propensity of children with autism to engage in restricted and repetitive behavior. One feature that is common in DTI that may contribute to…

The current study extends the literature on task interspersal (TI) by comparing the effects of four different TI ratios on the efficiency of skill acquisition and on levels of problem behavior in children with autism spectrum disorder and related disorders. The four ratios of TI were 3:1, 1:1, 1:3, and 0:1 mastered-to-acquisition tasks. An adapted…

The general purpose of the present study is to determine the relationship between direct and indirect preference assessments of individuals with severe and multiple disabilities (SMD) and the relationship between the direct preference assessments (single-stimulus, paired-stimulus, and multiple-stimulus) as applied to individuals with SMD, and to…

The present study aimed to develop a proposed training program based on DTT to improve the nonverbal communication skills in children with ASD. To achieve the objective of the study, the author developed a scale of non-verbal communication skills consisted of (20 items) measures attention and eye contact, imitation and using the signal,…