Teaching Children with Autism to Tact the Private Events of Others.

We evaluated the efficacy of a most-to-least intrusive error-correction/prompting procedure for teaching 3 children with autism to tact the private events of others through publicly accompanying stimuli. Participants did not reliably demonstrate correct tact responses to publicly observable stimuli that accompany common emotions reported by others (e.g., bandage = hurt) in baseline. Procedures were taken from the Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge Relational Training System: Direct Training Module (PEAK-DT) to aid in clinical replication, and training was introduced in a multiple-baseline design. Results showed that the procedures were efficacious in teaching this skill to each of the participants, and fast rates of acquisition were observed.

Establishing arbitrary comparative relations and referential transformations of stimulus function in individuals with autism.

Relational Frame Theory posits that complex language develops through arbitrarily applicable relational networks, with potential implications for individuals with autism. Responding relationally based on comparison occurs when participants respond to any number of comparative properties, such as "bigger" or "faster." Experiment 1 established two 3-member comparative networks, in which a stimulus A was conditioned as "bigger" or "faster" than a stimulus B, and the stimulus B was conditioned as "bigger" or "faster" than a stimulus C in 2 children with autism. Both participants met the mastery criterion for the trained relations and demonstrated the emergence of the untrained combinatorially entailed A-C and C-A relations. The participants could also match the arbitrary A stimuli with larger or faster objects and the C stimuli with smaller or slower objects. The results were replicated in Experiment 2 with the same participants, where a 5-member relational network was established for the bigger/smaller relation.

Abstraction of tactile properties by individuals with autism and Down syndrome using a picture-based communication system.

The present study evaluated the efficacy of a set of procedures for bringing tact extensions of abstract tactile properties under stimulus control. Two participants with disabilities who communicated via a picture-based communication system received reinforcement for tacts of tactile properties of four wet/dry and four hard/soft stimuli. Test trials were conducted to evaluate the extent to which the participants' correct responding generalized to novel stimuli with the same tactile properties. The results suggest that the procedures were effective in bringing tact extensions of abstract tactile properties under stimulus control. Both participants' correct responding generalized to a set of novel stimuli. Mastery level responding to training and test targets maintained for 2 weeks following training. The results provide further evidence supporting the use of DTT to teach stimulus abstraction to nonvocal verbal individuals who use augmentative forms of communication.

Establishing Derived Equivalence Relations of Basic Geography Skills in Children with Autism.

The present study evaluated the efficacy of a stimulus-equivalence training procedure in teaching basic geography skills to two children with autism. The procedures were taken directly from a standardized training curriculum based in stimulus equivalence theory called Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge Equivalence Module (PEAK-E). Results suggest that the procedures were efficacious in directly training several geographical relations, as well as promoting the derivation of several untrained relations for three countries and their corresponding continents. In addition, responding generalized from selecting countries on a tabletop paper map to selecting countries on an interactive touchscreen map.