Teaching children with autism to detect and respond to sarcasm
Highlights
► Taught children with ASD to understand sarcasm with multiple exemplar training. ► Generalization occurred across novel people, settings, and sarcastic comments. ► Results are encouraging for research on teaching nonliteral language and cognition.
Section snippets
Participants and setting
Participants included 3 children receiving applied behavior analytic services from a community-based in-home service provider. Children ranged in age from 6 to 7 years old and had current diagnoses of autistic disorder. At the time of the study, participants were receiving 2–10 h per week of behavioral therapy, and had been receiving in-home behavioral therapy for approximately 3–4 years. To be included in the study, participants’ parents and clinical supervisors needed to prioritize the detection
Results
Fig. 1 depicts the percentage of correct responses to sarcastic statements across all phases of the study. Note that asterisks represent accuracy on novel exemplars. In baseline, two of the three participants, Reggie and Kevin, did not respond correctly to any sarcastic comments, for example, saying with frustration “No, worms are not yummy!” Hans responded correctly to 1 out of 3 comments during baseline sessions 2 and 4. All participants showed immediate increases in correct responding to
Discussion
This study used rules, video clips, and in vivo training across multiple exemplars to successfully teach three children with autism to detect and respond appropriately to sarcastic comments. These results are encouraging because they provide further evidence that non-literal language deficits can be remediated using simple behavioral teaching procedures such as the provision of rules and multiple exemplar training. Perhaps most importantly, all three participants not only mastered the skill,
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