Descriptive assessments are necessary to identify social norms and establish a foundation for experimental analysis. Much of the social skills intervention literature involves goals that have been selected through interviews and direct observation of behavior without a reference to desired outcomes. The purpose of the current study was to extend…

Previous research demonstrates the efficacy of behavioral skills training with a textual prompt to establish greetings and conversational skills. This study examined the efficacy of a brief intervention of textual prompts with performance feedback for increasing social niceties of adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorder in a…

Students may engage in high rates of social approach responses at inappropriate times throughout the school day. One intervention that has been used to teach students appropriate and inappropriate times to access attention is a multiple schedule of reinforcement. In this study, we evaluated the efficacy of a multiple schedule that indicated when…

A limitation associated with communication-based interventions for problem behavior is the potential for requesting reinforcement at high rates. Multiple-schedule arrangements have been demonstrated to be effective for controlling rates of responding (Hanley, Iwata, & Thompson, 2001). In the current study, we extended previous research by teaching…

One child with developmental disabilities was taught to mand for attention by saying "excuse me." Treatment effects were extended to multiple training contexts by teaching the participant to attend to naturally occurring discriminative stimuli through differential reinforcement of communication during periods of the experimenter's nonbusy…

A social behavior chaining technique was used to train three autistic students (ages 10-11) to respond differentially to requested and nonrequested objects. Results suggested control of the "give me" response by the requested object, a characteristic of a mand. Results are discussed in terms of the training technique to establish…

The efficacy of a social-skills-training package in producing stimulus generalization, both with and without the systematic application of generalization programming techniques, was evaluated with five preschool children with hearing impairments. Results found generalization of the social skills did not occur until generalization programming…

A study used functional analyses to identify the social variables that maintained the inappropriate social-communicative behaviors of two adolescent students with mental retardation. Results were used to identify appropriate, functionally equivalent behaviors that the students were taught to self-monitor. The use of appropriate social skills was…

A study investigated the effectiveness in increasing social exchanges of embedding textual cues in the photographic activity schedules of three boys (ages 4-5) with autism. After learning to use the scripts, verbal elaborations and unscripted interactions increased. After scripts were faded, interactions continued and generalized to other…

Interactional behavior of two groups (N=3 females per group) of elderly mentally retarded group home residents was measured in two generalization situations before, during, and after one group received social skills training. Among conclusions were that generalization to natural interactional situations may be delayed following training.…

Social skills priming was used to increase the spontaneous social initiations of two socially withdrawn preschoolers, a 6-year-old boy with autism and a 2-year-old boy. During priming sessions, a teacher prompted and reinforced social behaviors. Spontaneous initiations were more frequent after high rates of reinforcement than after low…

Pretreatment assessment data were used to enhance an existing treatment package to reduce aggression and to increase the positive social interactions of a 9-year-old boy with moderate mental retardation and Hunter's syndrome. Additional reinforcements and punishment components were added and resulted in positive social interactions and suppressed…

A study successfully taught 2 4-year-olds with autism to ask questions of an adult who held a closed box with a toy inside. The first question produced the name of the toy, the second question produced the sight of it, and the third question produced the item itself. (Contains three references.) (Author/CR)

A study examined effects of a tactile prompting device (the Gentle Reminder) as a prompt for a 9-year-old student with autism to make verbal initiations about play activities. Results indicate that the device serves as an effective, unobtrusive prompt for verbal initiations during play contexts and during cooperative learning activities.…

This study, involving 4 children (ages 6 and 11) with autism, demonstrated that a self-management technique was effective in improving responsiveness to verbal initiations from others and in extending responsiveness to settings (community, home, and school) without the presence of a treatment provider. Concomitant reductions in disruptive behavior…