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Teaching children with autism to respond to disguised mands
Author(s) -
Najdowski Adel C.,
Bergstrom Ryan,
Tarbox Jonathan,
Clair Megan St.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of applied behavior analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.1
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1938-3703
pISSN - 0021-8855
DOI - 10.1002/jaba.413
Subject(s) - mand , psychology , autism , multiple baseline design , generalization , autism spectrum disorder , nonverbal communication , intervention (counseling) , developmental psychology , perspective (graphical) , cognitive psychology , social relation , reinforcement , social psychology , mathematical analysis , mathematics , psychiatry , artificial intelligence , computer science
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have difficulty inferring the private events of others, including private verbal behavior (e.g., thoughts), private emotional responses, and private establishing operations, often referred to as “perspective taking” by the general psychology community. Children with ASD also have difficulty responding to disguised mands. Skinner's description of the “disguised mand” is verbal behavior wherein the speaker's mand directly describes neither its reinforcer nor the corresponding establishing operations. Appropriate responding to disguised mands is required for successful social interaction, making it a social skill worth teaching to children with ASD. We used a nonconcurrent multiple baseline across participants design to investigate the effects of a multiple exemplar training package consisting of rules, role play, and feedback for teaching three boys with ASD to respond to disguised mands. The intervention was effective and generalization to novel disguised mands and people was observed.