Programming Common Stimuli to Promote Generalized Question-Asking

Abstract

This research is a case demonstration of programming generalized question-asking. A 5-year-old child with autism was taught to ask "What is that?" in the presence of unknown objects and name the objects he did know. In the training task, the experimenter held each item in front of the child and asked, "What is this?" Generalization in the presence of the experimenter was probed across four new tasks: (a) With 4 items on the table, the experimenter instructed the child, "Tell me what you see on the table"; (b) the experimenter held 10 cards face down and fanned out in front of the child and instructed the child, "Pick one"; (c) while pointing to the location of an item, the experimenter said, "Look, [name of participant]"; and (d) the experimenter handed the child an item and instructed the child to either give an object to another person or place an object in another location (i.e., "Give this to [name of third person]" or "Put this on the table/counter/bed"). The child's performance generalized to the first three tasks without additional training. The fourth task required programming of common stimuli before generalization occurred. Generalization was also assessed with the caregiver across these same four tasks. Results for the generalization probes involving the caregiver were similar except for the fourth task.