Teaching children with autism to challenge lies while playing board games
Board-game lie practice teaches autistic children to detect and challenge deception, and the skill lasts.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Three boys with autism played board games with adults who told lies. The adults said things like "You rolled a six" when the child really rolled a three.
The kids got multiple-exemplar training. That means they practiced spotting many kinds of lies across many turns and games.
Coaches taught a simple rule: stop, check the truth, and say "That’s not right" when something is false.
What they found
Every boy learned to challenge the lies during play. They kept the skill one month later.
They also used the skill with new adults they had never met.
How this fits with other research
Bergstrom et al. (2014) taught kids to refuse stranger lures in the park. Hedroj uses the same BST steps, but moves the lesson into a fun game at the table.
Levesque-Wolfe et al. (2021) showed we must train kids to tell the difference between safe and unsafe adults. Hedroj adds the next layer: how to speak up when any adult, even a safe one, says something false.
Bouck et al. (2016) first showed that multiple-exemplar training helps kids follow new rules. Hedroj extends that idea from "follow rules" to "challenge lies," proving MET works for social safety too.
Why it matters
You can now teach safety and assertiveness during play instead of scary stranger drills. Pick a favorite board game, script a few small lies, and use stop-check-speak up practice. One month later the child still calls out false statements, even with new people. That is a low-stress way to build real-world self-advocacy.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children with autism may have difficulties identifying and responding to lies, which can leave them vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation. Ranick et al. (2013) described efficacious procedures for teaching children with autism to identify deceptive statements. We replicated Ranick et al. with procedural modifications that included incorporating naturalistic differential reinforcement baselines, evaluating for faulty stimulus control, and including naturalistic probes in training. The treatment package consisted of multiple-exemplar training while the investigator and the participant played board games. Three boys between the ages of 6 and 9 years, diagnosed with autism, were presented with five trained deceptive statements and five probe deceptive statements. All three participants learned to challenge deceptive statements and distinguish them from nondeceptive statements, and all three maintained the skill after 1 month and generalized to novel deceivers.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2026 · doi:10.1002/jaba.70059