Teaching children with autism to mand for information

Abstract

In general terms a mand is a requesting response. Typically, children learn basic mands (e.g., “I want drink”) before learning to mand for information. Across three experiments I taught children with autism to mand for information using the mands “What is it?,” “Where?,” and/or “Which?”. In Experiment 1, a modified multiple-baseline design across situations was used to evaluate a teaching procedure that consisted of contrived motivating operations, prompt fading and prompt delay, natural consequences, error correction, and a brief preference assessment for teaching “What is it?” The results demonstrated strong internal validity with each of the three participants, with each showing generalization to situations, activities, scripts, the natural environment, and over time. In Experiment 2, a modified multiple-baseline design across three participants was used to evaluate approximately the same teaching procedure for teaching “Where?” The results demonstrated strong internal validity with each of the three participants, with generalization by all three participants to novel situations, activities, location the natural environment, and over time. In Experiment 3, a modified multiple-baseline design across three participants was used to evaluate approximately the same teaching procedure for teaching “Which?” The results demonstrated strong internal validity with generalization by all three participants to novel situations, activities, scripts, the natural environment, and over time. These findings are discussed in terms of its contributions to applied behaviour analysis research on teaching mand to children with autism.