Making Deception Fun: Teaching Autistic Individuals How to Play Friendly Tricks
Use rules, modeling, practice, and feedback to teach autistic kids safe tricks and watch the gags spread to new settings.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Four autistic kids learned to play friendly tricks. Think fake bug on the teacher’s chair or pretending the cookie jar is empty.
The team used a full behavioral-skills package: explain the rule, show a model, let the kid practice, give quick feedback. They kept adding new trick examples until each child could fool someone on their own.
What they found
Every child mastered the tricks. When brand-new gags appeared, they still fooled people. The skill stuck without extra teaching.
How this fits with other research
Ladouceur et al. (1997) first taught autistic teens to hide a coin in the “wrong” hand. That tiny deception needed only shaping and candy. St. Clair et al. (2024) now shows the same idea can grow into full, safe pranks using modeling, practice, and feedback.
Najdowski et al. (2017) used the exact MET recipe to teach kids to answer hidden requests like “It’s cold in here.” The 2024 paper flips the direction: instead of reading others’ hidden meaning, kids now create the hidden meaning themselves.
Welsh et al. (2019) used MET in parks and stores to teach “What does Mom see?” Both studies prove MET works for perspective skills, whether you’re taking someone else’s view or playfully twisting it.
Why it matters
Autistic learners often miss playful social games. This study gives you a ready script to add humor and surprise to their day. Run the same four-step package during lunch or recess. Pick safe tricks, practice twice, then let the learner try it on a peer. You may see new friendships start with laughter.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Perspective taking is a critical repertoire for navigating social relationships and consists of a variety of complex verbal skills, including socially adaptive forms of deception. Detecting and being able to use socially adaptive deception likely has many practical uses, including defending oneself against bullying, telling white lies to avoid hurting others’ feelings, keeping secrets and bluffing during games, and playing friendly tricks on others. Previous research has documented that some Autistic1 children have challenges identifying deception and playfully deceiving others (Reinecke et al., 1997). The current study employed a multiple baseline across participants design to evaluate the use of multiple exemplar training, rules, modeling, practice, and feedback for teaching four Autistic children and adolescents to use deception to play friendly tricks on others. The procedure was successful for all participants, and generalization was achieved across novel, untrained tricks.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2024 · doi:10.1007/s40617-024-00935-z