For most children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), manding for information is an important skill that must be systematically taught. Although previous studies have evaluated interventions for teaching other mands for information, to date no studies have demonstrated effective procedures for teaching the mand "why?" The purpose of the…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of intraverbal prompts on response diversity and novelty in intraverbals posed to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The intraverbal prompts involving function, feature, and class (FFC) of an item were used in the training of three questions requiring multiple responses. Two Chinese…

This study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of audio script and script-fading procedure in teaching initiation to children with ASD. Three children with ASD and a parent of each child participated in the study. A nonconcurrent multiple baseline design across children was used. The findings showed that the initiation emitted by the children…

This single case design study evaluated the effects of a video modeling (VM) intervention on the customer service skills of five young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Verbalization of greeting, service, and closing phrases contextualized to community employment settings were the target behaviors. A systematic approach to visual…

The present study evaluated the feasibility of the PEAK Relational Training System's Generalization Module (Dixon, 2014b) to teach and establish generalization of autoclitic mands, distorted tacts, and creative path finding in three children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Using a multiple-baseline design across behaviors, each…

Better conversational skills correspond to a higher quality of life for adults diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this study, we taught vocal--verbal responses discriminated by compound arrangements of concealed conversation partner mands to two college students with ASD. Participants learned to engage in self-questioning about…

Social skills training programs have increasingly enlisted same-age typical peers as instructors in the teaching of social skills to children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The inclusion of peers in the teaching process has been found to be a critical component in these programs. Despite strong support for incorporating…

This article presents an individual intervention combining cognitive-behavioral and behavior-analytic approaches to target severe emotion dysregulation in verbal youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) concurrent with intellectual disability (ID). The article focuses on two specific individuals who received the treatment within a therapeutic…

This study examined two facets of the use of social cues for early word learning in parent-child dyads, where children had an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or were typically developing. In Experiment 1, we investigated word learning and generalization by children with ASD (age range: 3;01-6;02) and typically developing children (age range:…

This study examined the effectiveness, generalization, and maintenance of a multi-element intervention consisting of brief direct instruction social skill lessons, a prompting procedure, and a fading procedure to promote social engagement in an integrated lunchroom and playground setting for three elementary age students with developmental…

This study aimed to directly compare the effectiveness of Pivotal Response Training (PRT) and Video Modeling (VM) in the acquisition and generalization of scripted play verbalizations and actions as well as the use of novel statements or actions in both the training and generalization settings. All five participants were exposed to both conditions…

Children with autism often lack complex socially expressive skills that would allow them to engage others more successfully. In the present study, video modeling was used to promote appropriate verbal comments, intonation, gestures, and facial expressions during social interactions of three children with autism. In baseline, the children rarely…

Students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have difficulties with verbal language. Many interventions to remediate such deficits require numerous materials and significant teacher time. This study sought to determine if a simple multi-component intervention that incorporated noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) and verbal modeling would result in…

A multiple-probe design was used to evaluate the effects of training on three children functioning on the higher end of the autism spectrum who were individually taught to answer each of three types of inferential "why" questions: (a) questions based on a three-card picture sequence, (b) questions based on a verbally presented brief…

Using a multiple probe design across responses, we demonstrated the effectiveness of intensive intervention in establishing spontaneous verbal responses to 2 3-year-old children with autism with generalization to novel settings involving novel persons. Intervention involved discrete-trial instruction (i.e., repeated instructional opportunities…