The Use of a Stimulus Control Transfer Procedure to Teach Motivation-Controlled Mands to Children With Autism

Social participation of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in natural environments can be enhanced by teaching them to communicate spontaneously, at least in situations where they have the motivation to access specific items or activities by controlling the amount of access for these stimuli. The purpose of this study was to determine if mand training, using a stimulus control transfer procedure would promote acquisition and generalization of mands for specific activities or objects evoked by motivating operations. Measurement variables included the frequency of motivation controlled (MO) versus multiply controlled mands during discrete trial training on a variety of verbal operants. Using a concurrent multiple baseline design across participants, visual analysis indicated that MO mands for out-of-view items increased substantially with generalization across targets, staff, and environments for three of the four participants. One participant did not respond to intervention to the same extent as others.

Discrimination and Generalization of Negatively-Reinforced Mands in Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

In this study, we extended the literature on the generalization of negatively-reinforced mands in three young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). First, we used example and nonexample stimuli embedded in mand training to teach a new, socially appropriate, negatively-reinforced mand to reject unpreferred food items while continuously assessing mand discrimination. Second, we evaluated the discriminated generalization of the newly acquired mand by using untrained example and nonexample stimuli. Finally, we conducted maintenance probes to examine if the new, discriminated mand occurred over time in the absence of training. Results suggest that our mand training produced acquisition of a discriminated negatively-reinforced mand in all three children. Data indicate that the newly acquired, discriminated mand generalized to untrained food items and was maintained after training was discontinued. We discuss the conceptual significance and clinical implications of using example and nonexample stimuli to produce acquisition, generalization, and maintenance of negatively-reinforced mands in young children with ASD and language delays.