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ESTABLISHING A GENERALIZED REPERTOIRE OF HELPING BEHAVIOR IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISM
Author(s) -
Reeve Sharon A.,
Reeve Kenneth F.,
Townsend Dawn Buffington,
Poulson Claire L.
Publication year - 2007
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 - 10.1901/jaba.2007.11-05
Subject(s) - repertoire , generalization , psychology , discriminative model , autism , multiple baseline design , reinforcement , helping behavior , developmental psychology , autism spectrum disorder , cognitive psychology , intervention (counseling) , social psychology , artificial intelligence , computer science , mathematical analysis , physics , mathematics , psychiatry , acoustics
The present study used a multiple baseline across participants design to assess whether 4 children with autism could learn a generalized repertoire of helping adults with different tasks through the use of a multicomponent teaching package. Different helping responses were taught in the presence of multiple exemplars of discriminative stimuli drawn from experimenter‐defined categories of helping behavior (e.g., locating objects, putting away items, setting up an activity). During the training condition, video models, prompting, and reinforcement were used. The results showed that all 4 children learned to emit appropriate helping responses in the presence of discriminative stimuli from the helping categories used during training. Generalization of helping responses was observed in the presence of untrained discriminative stimuli during additional probe conditions. Additional pre‐ and postintervention generalization trials showed that the frequency of helping responses also increased in the presence of novel stimuli, in a novel setting, and with a novel instructor.