Teaching children with autism spectrum disorder to tact olfactory stimuli

Research on tact acquisition by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has often focused on teaching participants to tact visual stimuli. It is important to evaluate procedures for teaching tacts of nonvisual stimuli (e.g., olfactory, tactile). The purpose of the current study was to extend the literature on secondary target instruction and tact training by evaluating the effects of a discrete‐trial instruction procedure involving (a) echoic prompts, a constant prompt delay, and error correction for primary targets; (b) inclusion of secondary target stimuli in the consequent portion of learning trials; and (c) multiple exemplar training on the acquisition of item tacts of olfactory stimuli, emergence of category tacts of olfactory stimuli, generalization of category tacts, and emergence of category matching, with three children diagnosed with ASD. Results showed that all participants learned the item and category tacts following teaching, participants demonstrated generalization across category tacts, and category matching emerged for all participants.     

Teaching children with autism spectrum disorder to tact auditory stimuli: A replication

It is important that tacts are controlled by stimuli across all senses but teaching tacts to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often limited to visual stimuli. This study replicated and extended a study on the effects of antecedent-stimulus presentations on the acquisition of auditory tacts. We used a concurrent multiple probe across sets design and an embedded adapted alternating treatments design to evaluate acquisition of auditory tacts when auditory stimuli were presented alone (i.e., isolated) or with corresponding pictures (i.e., compound-with-known and compound-with-unknown) with two school-aged boys with ASD. Both participants' responding met the mastery criterion no matter the stimulus presentation with at least one set, but one participant failed to acquire one set of stimuli in the isolated condition. The isolated condition was rarely the most efficient. We conducted post-training stimulus-control probes, and we observed disrupted stimulus control in the isolated condition for one participant. Implications for arranging auditory tacts instruction are discussed.     

Establishing initial auditory‐visual conditional discriminations and emergence of initial tacts in young children with autism spectrum disorder

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often display impaired listener skills, and few studies have evaluated procedures for establishing initial auditory‐visual conditional discrimination skills. We developed and evaluated a treatment package for training initial auditory‐visual conditional discriminations based on the extant research on training such discriminations in children with ASD with at least some preexisting skills in this area. The treatment package included (a) conditional‐only training, (b) prompting the participant to echo the sample stimulus as a differential observing response, (c) prompting correct selection responses using an identity‐match prompt, (d) using progressively delayed prompts, and (e) repeating trials until the participant emitted an independent correct response. Results indicated all participants mastered all listener targets, and the two participants for whom we tested the emergence of corresponding tacts showed mastery of most tacts without direct training. We discuss these results relative to prior research on listener skills and tacts.     

A Comparison of Within- and Across-Activity Choices for Reducing Challenging Behavior in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Offering children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) choices between activities (e.g., working on math or English), instructional materials (e.g., using a pen or pencil), or environmental arrangements (e.g., where to sit) has been shown to reduce challenging behavior maintained by escape from task demands. However, the majority of research investigating choice-based interventions for challenging behavior has examined across-activity choices (i.e., choosing between activities) and relatively few studies have examined within-activity choice (i.e., choosing between instructional materials or environmental arrangements). The purpose of this study is to replicate and extend previous research on choice-based challenging behavior interventions by comparing the effects of across-activity choices and within-activity choices on the escape-maintained challenging behavior of 4 children with ASD. An alternating treatment design was embedded within the “B” phase of an ABAB design in which the “A” phase represented a no-choice baseline condition. Both choice formats resulted in less challenging behavior than the baseline condition for all participants. Across-activity choice resulted in less challenging behavior than within-activity choice for 3 participants. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

A Brief Group Intervention Using Video Games to Teach Sportsmanship Skills to Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Impaired social skills represent a fundamental deficit for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Despite the potential importance of “good sportsmanship,” this social skill has received relatively little attention in the literature. The current study utilized a Behavioral Skills Training (BST) approach to teach three sportsmanship skills (i.e., complimenting, turn taking, and being a good sport) during video game play (Wii Sports). Six children with ASD completed this study. Findings suggest BST can be used effectively to teach sportsmanship skills to children with ASD. The use of video-game technology as part of social skills intervention programs is also discussed.     

Teaching children with autism spectrum disorder to tact auditory stimuli

Studies on teaching tacts to individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have primarily focused on visual stimuli, despite published clinical recommendations to teach tacts of stimuli in other sensory domains as well. In the current study, two children with ASD were taught to tact auditory stimuli under two stimulus‐presentation arrangements: isolated (auditory stimuli presented without visual cues) and compound (auditory stimuli presented with visual cues). Results indicate that compound stimulus presentation was a more effective teaching procedure, but that it interfered with prior object‐name tacts. A modified compound arrangement in which object‐name tact trials were interspersed with auditory‐stimulus trials mitigated this interference.     

Caregivers can implement play-based instruction without disrupting child preference

Young children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder often require systematic teaching to learn new skills, and caregivers can teach their children by embedding learning opportunities in a play-based context. However, researchers have not evaluated procedures to train caregivers how to implement a combination of strategies designed to establish rapport and early language skills while maintaining play as a preferred context. Caregiver–child dyads composed of 2 mothers and their sons were recruited to participate. A multiple-probe design across strategies was used to demonstrate the efficacy of behavioral skills training on the mothers' integration of parallel play, child-directed interaction, teaching requests (mands), and teaching labels (tacts). Both children acquired the target requests and labels as a function of their mothers' teaching. By assessing the children's preferences, we confirmed the teaching strategies did not decrease toy engagement or the value of playing with their mother. We obtained stimulus generalization of the mothers' implementation of the strategies from a clinic to their home and maintenance of mother and child performance across a month.     

Comparing Continuous and Discontinuous Data Collection during Discrete Trial Teaching of Tacting by Children with Autism

The present study compared continuous and discontinuous data collection systems on acquisition, generalization, and maintenance of tacts, and on‐task behavior, during discrete trial teaching with three children with autism. A constant prompt‐delay procedure was used to teach tacts. Performance across data collection systems was compared using continuous measurement collected daily in the presence of teaching, discontinuous measurement of the first trial only, and discontinuous measurement collected weekly in the absence of teaching (i.e., probe data). An adapted alternating treatments design was used. For two of the three participants, tacts were acquired most rapidly in the continuous measurement condition, although the differences were small. For the third participant, no systematic differences were found in skill acquisition across the three data collection systems. For all three participants, minimal to no differences were found across data collection systems with regard to generalization and maintenance of tacting, and on‐task behavior. Additionally, procedural integrity was high and comparable across all data collection procedures. Overall, these results suggest the use of continuous data collection for teaching tacts to children with autism, as it provides the most sensitive measure of change in performance. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Toward establishing a qualifying autoclitic repertoire in children with autism spectrum disorder

Autoclitics are secondary verbal operants that are controlled by a feature of the conditions that occasion or evoke a primary verbal operant such as a tact or mand. Qualifying autoclitics extend, negate, or assert a speaker's primary verbal response and modify the intensity or direction of the listener's behavior. Howard and Rice (1988) established autoclitics that indicated weak stimulus control (e.g., “like a [primary tact]”) with four neurotypical preschool children. However, generalization to newly acquired tacts was limited. In Experiment 1, we addressed similar behavior as in Howard and Rice but with autistic children while using simultaneous teaching procedures, and we observed generalization across sets and with newly acquired tacts. In Experiment 2, we evaluated the effects of multiple-exemplar training on generalization of autoclitics across sets of naturalistic stimuli. Across participants, gradual increases in the frequency of autoclitics occurred with untaught stimuli after teaching with one or more sets.     

Teaching social play skills to adults and children with autism as an approach to building rapport

Adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and no intellectual disabilities were taught to increase the social play skills of children with ASD as part of a vocational training program. Participants included 3 adults, aged 21 to 27 years, and 6 children with ASD. Probes conducted throughout the study evaluated whether play skills training affected a measure of rapport between the adult and child. Results demonstrated the effectiveness of behavioral skills training for teaching the adult participants the appropriate play skills. In addition, the children's social engagement increased. Finally, rapport probes showed that play skills training increased levels of proximity, our measure of rapport, between the adults and children.     

Promoting the development of verbal responses using instructive feedback

Shillingsburg, Frampton, Cleveland, and Cariveau (2018) taught listener and tact by feature, name–feature intraverbal, and feature–name intraverbal responses across sets and reported emergence of responses that were not directly trained for 6 individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The current study was a systematic replication with the addition of instructive feedback (IF) with 2 children diagnosed with ASD. During trials for previously mastered listener by name responses (e.g., “Point to Tennessee” and child selects a picture of Tennessee), the experimenters provided related IF (e.g., “The capital of this state is Nashville”). After 3 sessions, we evaluated the effects of IF on related verbal responses (e.g., listener by feature, tact by feature, name–feature intraverbal, and feature–name intraverbal) across sets probes. We observed increased correct responses for related verbal responses; replicating Shillingsburg et al. Results suggest that the inclusion of IF may increase the efficiency of verbal behavior programming.     

Teaching safety skills to children to prevent gun play

Research has shown that children often engage in gun play when they find a firearm and that this behavior is often involved in unintentional firearm injuries. Previous research has shown existing programs to be ineffective for teaching children safety skills to reduce gun play. This study examined the effectiveness of a behavioral skills training (BST) program supplemented with in situ training for teaching children safety skills to use when they find a gun (i.e., don't touch, leave the area, tell an adult). Eight 4- to 5-year-old children were trained and assessed in a naturalistic setting and in a generalized setting in a multiple baseline across subjects design. Results showed that 3 of the children performed the skills after receiving BST, whereas 5 of the children required supplemental in situ training. All children in the study learned to perform the skills when assessed in a naturalistic setting and when assessed in a generalization setting. Performance was maintained at 2- to 8-week follow-up assessments.     

Hot and Cool Executive Function and its Relation to Theory of Mind in Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder

Previous research has clearly demonstrated that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) involves deficits in multiple neuropsychological functions, such as executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM). A conceptual distinction is commonly made between cool and hot EF. In ASD, continued attention has been paid to the cool areas of executive dysfunction. Cool EF has been strongly related to ToM, but research has not taken into account the association between hot EF and ToM in ASD. The present study investigated the associations between hot and cool EF and ToM in 56 school-aged children with ASD and 69 controls on tasks tapping cool EF (i.e., working memory, inhibition, planning), hot EF (i.e., affective decision making, delay discounting), and ToM (i.e., mental state/emotion recognition and false belief). Significant group differences in each EF measure support an executive dysfunction in both domains in ASD. Strong associations between delay discounting and ToM mental state/emotion recognition were found, suggesting that hot EF makes a unique contribution to ToM above and beyond cool EF in typical development and ASD. This study improves understanding of the profile of higher-order cognitive deficits in children with ASD, which may inform diagnosis and intervention.     

Teaching children with autism to tact private events based on public accompaniments

We evaluated a method for teaching children with autism spectrum disorder to respond to tactile stimulation of multiple body parts. Various objects (e.g., hairbrush) produced the sensations (e.g., prickly). In a multiple baseline design across participants, participants learned 9 sensation body part tacts and the evaluation concluded with tests of generalization to 3 novel body parts, 6 novel objects, and 3 novel sensations. Participants demonstrated generalization to novel objects, and to a lesser extent, novel body parts, but did not generalize tacts to novel sensations. These findings are discussed in terms of implications for teaching children with autism to tact sensations.     

Attention to low- and high-spatial frequencies in categorizing facial identities, emotions and gender in children with autism

This study was aimed at investigating face categorization strategies in children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). Performance of 17 children with ASD was compared to that of 17 control children in a face-matching task, including hybrid faces (composed of two overlapping faces of different spatial bandwidths) and either low- or high-pass filtered faces. Participants were asked to match faces on the basis of identity, emotion or gender. Results revealed that children with ASD used the same strategies as controls when matching faces by gender. By contrast, in the identity and the emotion conditions, children with ASD showed a high-pass bias (i.e., preference for local information), contrary to controls. Consistent with previous studies on autism, these findings suggest that children with ASD do use atypical (local-oriented) strategies to process faces.     

Comparison of TAGteach and Video Modeling to Teach Daily Living Skills to Adolescents with Autism

The development of independent behavior, specifically for daily living skills, proves critical as individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) pass through the high school environment into adulthood. The present study examined the short-term effects of two instructional methods (i.e., TAGteach, video modeling) to improve accuracy on daily living tasks for adolescents with ASD. The experimenter implemented an adapted alternating treatments design to compare the effects of TAGteach and video modeling for teaching daily living skills (i.e., teeth brushing, face washing, applying deodorant). Participants included three 17-year-old male students diagnosed with ASD who made minimal progress acquiring these skills in the past. Results indicated that short-term instruction using both TAGteach and video modeling produced immediate improvements in performance on targeted tasks for all three students.     

Further evaluation of emerging speech in children with developmental disabilities: training verbal behavior

The conceptual basis for many effective language-training programs are based on Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior. Skinner described several elementary verbal operants including mands, tacts, intraverbals, and echoics. According to Skinner, responses that are the same topography may actually be functionally independent. Previous research has supported Skinner's assertion of functional independence (e.g., Hall & Sundberg, 1987; Lamarre & Holland, 1985), and some research has suggested that specific programming must be incorporated to achieve generalization across verbal operants (e.g., Sigafoos, Reichle, & Doss, 1990). The present study provides further analysis of the independence of verbal operants when teaching language to children with autism and other developmental disabilities. In the current study, 3 participants' vocal responses were first assessed as mands or tacts. Generalization for each verbal operant across alternate conditions was then assessed and subsequent training provided as needed. Results indicated that generalization across verbal operants occurred across some, but not all, vocal responses. These results are discussed relative to the functional independence of verbal operants as described by Skinner.     

Interactive computer training to teach discrete‐trial instruction to undergraduates and special educators in Brazil: A replication and extension

Discrete‐trial instruction (DTI) is a behavioral method of teaching young children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) that has received a significant amount of research support. Because of a lack of qualified trainers in many areas of the world, researchers have recently begun to investigate alternative methods of training professionals to implement behavioral teaching procedures. One promising training method is interactive computer training, in which slides with recorded narration, video modeling, and embedded evaluation of content knowledge are used to teach a skill. In the present study, the effectiveness of interactive computer training developed by Pollard, Higbee, Akers, and Brodhead (2014), translated into Brazilian Portuguese, was evaluated with 4 university students (Study 1) and 4 special education teachers (Study 2). We evaluated the effectiveness of training on DTI skills during role‐plays with research assistants (Study 1) and during DTI sessions with young children with ASD (Studies 1 and 2) using a multiple baseline design. All participants acquired DTI skills after interactive computer training, although 5 of 8 participants required some form of feedback to reach proficiency. Responding generalized to untaught teaching programs for all participants. We evaluated maintenance with the teachers in Study 2, and DTI skills were maintained with 3 of 4 participants.     

After School Care for Children on the Autism Spectrum

Few programs exist for after school care designed to support children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Not only do parents often depend on after school care, but also children with ASD are likely to benefit from opportunities to generalize skills in an authentic setting and interact with typically developing peers. This lack of support occurs at a time during which there is increasing research and community awareness regarding the need for high quality after school programs to support typically developing children. This study investigates reported experiences with and needs for after school care by parents of children with ASD. Survey results (N = 54) revealed that the majority of parents surveyed desired after school programs within their child’s school but are often denied access to such services or received low quality care for their child in after school programs. Recommendations are provided for future research and program development.