Previous research has shown that children with autism often have deficits in deception, both in the ability to lie to others and in the ability to detect when they are being lied to. Additionally, children with autism are frequently the victims of bullying and difficulty with understanding deception likely makes the population more vulnerable to…

Researchers have shown that children with autism have difficulty with non-literal language, such as irony, sarcasm, deception, humor, and metaphors. To date, few studies have attempted to remediate these deficits, and no studies of which we are aware have attempted to teach children with autism to understand metaphors. Metaphorical reasoning…

Question asking behavior, or requesting information, is often deficient in children with autism and can prove challenging to teach. Currently, there exists a paucity of research regarding the types of teaching strategies that are effective in teaching children with autism this crucial skill. The purpose of the present study was to examine…

In general terms a mand is a requesting response. Teaching children with autism to mand for information is often a difficult task given their language deficits. The present study examined a procedure consisting of contrived motivating operations, prompt fading, manded consequences, error correction, and a brief preference assessment for teaching…

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…

We investigated the extent to which mands for information taught using structured teaching trials (i.e., verbal discriminative stimulus, verbal prompts, and programmed consequences) while contriving the establishing operations to young children with autism generalized to novel stimuli and settings. Three students with autism participated in this…

Previous research suggests that vocational skills training for individuals with autism may increase the likelihood that they may be effectively employed. In the present study, a multiple-baseline-across-participants design was used to assess the effects of graduated guidance, scripts, and script fading to teach four adolescents with autism in a…

Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) is used to teach a variety of skills to children with developmental disabilities. However, it remains unclear whether CAI or direct instruction from a therapist produces better learning outcomes. In addition, no studies have evaluated the ease of training therapists to implement CAI versus direct instruction. In…

Adolescents with autism struggle with developing meaningful social relationships. Learning appropriate conversational skills can be an important first step in creating friendships. A procedure that has been effective in teaching conversational skills to typically developing adolescents is the teaching interaction procedure, which involves…

Although the demand for training individuals to implement discrete-trials teaching (DTT) is high, published studies on strategies to do so are few. We used a modified multiple-baseline design across participants to evaluate a training package for teaching university students to implement a 19-component DTT procedure to teach three tasks to a…

A limited number of studies have investigated the effects of behavioral skills training (BST) on staff acquisition and generalization of discrete trial teaching (DTT) and student behavior. BST was used to improve three staff's use of DTT interactions with four children with autism. A multiple baseline design across participants was used to assess…