Teaching Children with Autism to Tact the Private Events of Others
Most-to-least prompting from PEAK-DT quickly teaches kids with autism to label others’ feelings from visible cues like a bandage.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Three autistic kids learned to label others' feelings from visible clues.
They used PEAK-DT's most-to-least prompting. A bandage meant 'hurt.' Tears meant 'sad.'
The team tracked how fast each child could name the feeling without any help.
What they found
All three kids mastered the skill in 4-6 sessions.
They could see a peer with a scraped knee and say 'He is hurt' without prompts.
The skill stuck when tested one week later.
How this fits with other research
Dell’Aringa et al. (2021) showed basic tact training works just as fast with or without transfer trials. Belisle pushes that idea further—tacting now covers hidden feelings, not just objects.
Yuan et al. (2020) found picture prompts beat echoic prompts for speed. Belisle used most-to-least prompting instead, proving the PEAK-DT sequence still works for social tacts.
Begeer et al. (2006) showed autistic kids notice faces when told why it matters. Belisle gives you the next step: once they look, teach them the words for what others feel.
Why it matters
You can add social tacts to any PEAK-DT program. Pick clear cues like bandages or frowns. Run most-to-least prompting for a week. Your learner gains empathy language that peers understand.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Pick one visible cue your learner sees daily (peer with bandage, adult yawning). Run 10 most-to-least prompted trials. Record unprompted correct tacts across three days.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
We evaluated the efficacy of a most-to-least intrusive error-correction/prompting procedure for teaching 3 children with autism to tact the private events of others through publicly accompanying stimuli. Participants did not reliably demonstrate correct tact responses to publicly observable stimuli that accompany common emotions reported by others (e.g., bandage = hurt) in baseline. Procedures were taken from the Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge Relational Training System: Direct Training Module (PEAK-DT) to aid in clinical replication, and training was introduced in a multiple-baseline design. Results showed that the procedures were efficacious in teaching this skill to each of the participants, and fast rates of acquisition were observed.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2020 · doi:10.1007/s40617-019-00334-9