Teaching Children with Autism Extended Verbal Utterances Under Audience Control in the Context of Show-and-Tell

The present study evaluated the efficacy of a discrete-trial-training procedure to bring extended verbal behavior under the convergent control of audience and contextual variables during a show-and-tell activity. Three children with autism were exposed initially to a baseline condition in which they were presented with a preferred item and asked to tell the class about it. Following low rates of responding, a differential reinforcement procedure was implemented that reinforced extending the verbal utterance word length beyond baseline levels allowing for an appropriate display of “show-and-tell” behavior. The results show that the procedures were efficacious in application with three children with autism, providing a method that can be conducted in classroom settings to teach a complex form of verbal operant behavior.