Toward establishing a qualifying autoclitic repertoire in children with autism spectrum disorder
Teach little words like "a" and "some" with many picture examples and kids with autism will start using them on new items without extra training.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Owen and team worked with three preschoolers who had autism.
None of the kids could add little words like "a," "the," or "some" when naming things.
The trainers showed many picture sets. Each set had the same item in different amounts.
For example, one apple, some apples, the apple. The kids copied the full phrase and got stickers.
What they found
After learning only two or three sets, the children started using the little words on brand-new pictures.
They said "a dog" or "some cookies" even when those exact phrases had never been taught.
The words showed up without extra drills or rewards. Generalization happened naturally.
How this fits with other research
Patton et al. (2020) used the same many-example method to teach joint-attention bids. Both studies got strong generalization in kids with autism.
Sivaraman (2017) also used many examples, but taught empathy faces instead of words. Again, the skill spread to new people and places.
Ptomey et al. (2021) ran a computer version for naming. Their preschoolers learned faster too. The pattern is clear: lots of examples make the skill stick.
Why it matters
You can add qualifying autoclitics to your verbal-behavior program tomorrow. Pick a few nouns the child already tacts. Show one, some, and the item across five clear photos. Teach two sets, then probe new items. If generalization appears, you just saved hours of drill time. If not, run one more set and probe again. This keeps therapy fresh and moves the child toward fuller, adult-like speech.
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Join Free →Pick two nouns the child already names; teach "a ___, some ___, the ___" with five photos each, then test new pictures for generalization.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Autoclitics are secondary verbal operants that are controlled by a feature of the conditions that occasion or evoke a primary verbal operant such as a tact or mand. Qualifying autoclitics extend, negate, or assert a speaker's primary verbal response and modify the intensity or direction of the listener's behavior. Howard and Rice (1988) established autoclitics that indicated weak stimulus control (e.g., "like a [primary tact]") with four neurotypical preschool children. However, generalization to newly acquired tacts was limited. In Experiment 1, we addressed similar behavior as in Howard and Rice but with autistic children while using simultaneous teaching procedures, and we observed generalization across sets and with newly acquired tacts. In Experiment 2, we evaluated the effects of multiple-exemplar training on generalization of autoclitics across sets of naturalistic stimuli. Across participants, gradual increases in the frequency of autoclitics occurred with untaught stimuli after teaching with one or more sets.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2024 · doi:10.1002/jaba.1026