Difficulties with social interaction are characteristic of autism. This study presents data illustrating the use of motivational strategies in play dates to improve the quality of social interactions between children with autism and their typically developing peers. Specifically, a multiple baseline design across participants shows how a…

Research suggests that motivation of autistic children can be increased and that this may be a crucial variable in the acquisition, generalization, and maintenance of their treatment gains. Discussion focuses on effects of failure on motivation, learned helplessness, shared control and increased success, and strategies for increasing exposure to…

The study evaluated the differential effectiveness of two methods of presenting discrimination tasks with two autistic children (7 and 5 years of age). In a constant task condition, the common method of presenting a single task throughout a session was used. In a varied task condition, the same task was interspersed with a variety of other tasks.…

The study attempted to improve verbal language acquisition for two nonverbal four- and five-year-old autistic children by incorporating natural language interactions and motivational techniques. Broadly generalized treatment gains resulted from use of functional and varied stimuli, natural reinforcers, reinforcement of communicative attempts, and…

This manual presents a training methodology for use in changing pivotal behaviors of children with autism or other severe handicaps. Behaviors specifically addressed for their far ranging effects involve motivation and responsivity to multiple cues. Seven instructional points are detailed with both good and poor implementation examples. The manual…

This article presents an overview of several pivotal response interventions. Areas discussed include responsivity to multiple cues, motivation to initiate and respond appropriately to social and environmental stimuli, and self-regulation of behaviors. The trend to streamline intervention by targeting behaviors that have a widespread effect on…

A study involving 6 children with autism investigated whether self-initiations might be associated with highly favorable post-intervention outcomes. Results found that children who had highly favorable outcomes exhibited more spontaneous self-initiations at pre-intervention. Further study indicated children could learn a variety of…

Incorporated motivational procedures to teach question-asking to three children (ages three and five). All children learned to use questions in relation to items they had previously been unable to label and demonstrated generalization of spontaneous question-asking to new items and to their home environments with their mothers, with concomitant…

This study assessed collateral effects during unstructured dinnertime family interactions of two different paradigms for training parents of 17 children with autism. One taught individual target behaviors serially, and the other taught the pivotal responses (PRT) of motivation and responsivity to multiple cues. Results suggested the PRT…