The Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities (ABLA) was developed to assess the ease or difficulty with which individuals with intellectual disabilities are able to learn an imitation task and five 2-choice discriminations, called levels. Level 6 is an auditory-visual discrimination. We examined whether children with autism who passed ABLA Level 6 (Group 1) would more readily learn to name objects than children with autism who failed Level 6 (Group 2). The 2 groups were matched on the communication subscale of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale. Group 1 learned more object names, and in significantly fewer trials, than Group 2. The implications for language training are discussed. (Contains 4 figures and 1 table.)