Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulty generalizing from directly trained responses to untrained responses (i.e., emergent responding). In this study, we used a chain prompt combined with matrix training to teach 2 participants with ASD to tact 192 three-digit numerals. We used a multiple-baseline design across matrices to…

The efficacy and efficiency of telehealth and in-person training were compared while teaching seven undergraduate students to implement components of discrete trial training. A multiple-baseline design across skills with elements of multiple probe and delayed multiple baseline combined with an alternating-treatments design was used to evaluate the…

Few studies have evaluated interventions to improve the job-related social skills of adults with autism spectrum disorder. In this study, we examined the efficacy of a treatment package for teaching several social skills that are critical to job success, such as responding appropriately to feedback and asking for a task model from the supervisor.…

The Internet and information and communications technologies (ICTs) have been found to produce meaningful social interactions and greater social support among older adults (White et al., [White, H., 2002]). Despite these benefits, the Internet and ICTs are not widely used among the older-adult population (Cresci, Yarandi, & Morrell, [Cresci,…

Research has identified a variety of effective approaches for responding to errors during discrete-trial training. In one commonly used method, the therapist delivers a prompt contingent on the occurrence of an incorrect response and then re-presents the trial so that the learner has an opportunity to perform the correct response independently.…

This investigation sheds light on necessary and sufficient conditions to establish self-care behavior chains among people with developmental disabilities. First, a descriptive assessment (DA) identified the types of teaching errors that occurred during self-care instruction. Second, the relative effects of three teaching errors observed during the…

Individuals who have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders can have difficulty acquiring new skills, and teaching procedures found to be efficient with 1 individual may not be efficient with others. However, relatively little research has evaluated methods to identify efficient, individualized response-prompt and prompt-fading procedures.…

The preschool life skills (PLS) program (Hanley, Heal, Tiger, & Ingvarsson, 2007; Luczynski & Hanley, 2013) involves teaching social skills as a means of decreasing and preventing problem behavior. However, achieving durable outcomes as children transition across educational settings depend on the generalization and long-term maintenance…

Descriptive praise has been recommended widely as an important teaching tactic for children with autism, despite the absence of published supporting evidence. We compared the effects of descriptive and general praise on the acquisition and maintenance of intraverbal skills with 2 children with autism. The results showed slight advantages of…

We taught 3 children with autism to raise a hand or keep both hands down depending on their status (e.g., having heard a target word, possessing a specific item) using modeling, prompting, and reinforcement. All 3 children acquired accurate hand-raising skills in response to progressively more difficult discrimination tasks during group…

Three autistic children (ages 9-11) received spontaneous communication training using a time delay, modeling, and food reinforcement procedure. Results showed gains in 2 spontaneous responses ("please" and "thank you") and 1 verbally prompted response ("you're welcome"). Gains were validated socially with 10 adults. (Author/JDD)

This study demonstrated that written specific task analyses combined with end-of-trial performance feedback were effective in promoting the acquisition and generalization of functional cleaning tasks by 11 young adults with mild disabilities. Performance transferred to natural discriminative stimuli. (Author/DB)

Prompting, modeling, and differential reinforcement were used to teach three nonverbal adults with severe to profound mental retardation to exit their group homes at the sound of the house fire alarm. All three learned to exit independently in less than two minutes in all or the majority of surprise fire drills. (Author/JDD)