Contriving motivating operations to evoke mands for information in preschoolers with autism
Introduction
Typically developing children tend to emit high rates of question asking behavior, or mands for information. Children with autism typically have trouble acquiring mands for information. This may be because the establishing operations controlling these mands are not strong enough to evoke the mand for information. In other words, the information is not “valuable” enough to motivate the individual to ask the question to obtain it. Thus, an effective method of teaching mands for information may include manipulation of the establishing operation in order to increase the probability that a mand will occur. Previous research has been conducted with individuals with disabilities in which question asking behavior was taught (Taylor & Harris, 1995; Twardosz & Baer, 1973; Williams, Donley, & Keller, 2000). Many of the previous studies have manipulated a motivating operation in order to teach a mand, such as “What is that?” or “Can I have it?” However, these studies did not contrive motivating operations in order to teach a mand for information involving where, why, or who.
Sundberg, Loeb, Hale, and Eigenheer (2002) conducted two experiments in which children with autism were taught to mand for information involving the location of an item. Participants were given access to a preferred item in a container, then the container was given back without the item. When the participant manded using “Where (item?),” the location of the item was provided (a can, box, or bag). Once they were able to successfully mand using “Where,” a second experiment was conducted in which the item was given to an adult, and the participants were taught to mand “Who has it?” The present study is a systematic replication of the study by Sundberg et al. (2002) utilizing a different population (preschoolers with autism), a naturalistic experimental preparation that more fully approximates the environment where the target skill will be used, and with the addition of a stimulus preference assessment.
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Participants and setting
Four males aged 3–5 years, enrolled in a self-contained intensive behavioral intervention program for participants with ASD on a university campus, served as participants in the two experiments. Stewart, age 4; Braden, age 4; Gavin, age 3; and Dillon, age 5, had received independent diagnoses of Autistic Spectrum Disorder by outside agencies or physicians. Stewart, Braden, and Gavin participated in Experiment 1 and Stewart, Braden, and Dillon participated in Experiment 2. All participants
Discussion
The results of these experiments demonstrate that preschoolers with autism are capable of learning to mand for information with the manipulation of motivating operations and a simple prompting procedure. These results are consistent with those reported by Sundberg et al. (2002). The rationale for utilizing motivating operation manipulations is to ensure that mand behavior comes under the control of the appropriate conditions. If alternative sources of reinforcement are used, such as tokens or
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