Individuals with conversation skill deficits often have difficulties discriminating cues of interest and uninterest from their conversation partner(s). We used behavioral skills training (BST) to teach 3 individuals with autism spectrum disorder to converse about the conversation partner's topics of interest, initiate strategic preferred topics to…

Previous research has shown that responding to the appropriate and problematic speech of individuals diagnosed with developmental disabilities with interested and uninterested listener responses, respectively, can promote more appropriate conversational engagement. However, Fisher et al. (2013) also responded to appropriate speech with access to…

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,…

Successful conversation requires that the speaker's behavior is sensitive to nonvocal listener responses. We observed children with autism spectrum disorder during conversation probes in which a listener periodically displayed nonvocal cues that she was uninterested in the conversation. We used behavioral skills training to teach conversation…

Restricted and repetitive behavior (RRB) is more pervasive, prevalent, frequent, and severe in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) than in their typical peers. One subtype of RRB is restricted interests in items or activities, which is evident in the manner in which individuals engage with items (e.g., repetitious wheel spinning),…

We evaluated antecedent exercise for treating the automatically reinforced problem behavior of 4 individuals with autism. We conducted preference assessments to identify leisure and exercise items that were associated with high levels of engagement and low levels of problem behavior. Next, we conducted three 3-component multiple-schedule…