Teaching Children with Autism to Tact the Private Events of Others

Abstract

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.