Intervention for tact as reporting in children with autism

Many children with autism have severe difficulty in ‘reporting’ on events at schools to mothers at home despite their ability to tact some objects and actions in discrete trial setting. Many studies have attempted to establish tact as labeling in children with autism. Few studies, however, have attempted to establish tact as a functional communication skill. The conditions under which children with autism acquired tact regarding objects and events that are remote in time and space from the listener was investigated in three children with autism. A multiple-baseline design was implemented to evaluate intervention effects. Animated cartoons or still pictures were used as stimuli and the children were required to walk to see a stimulus, observe it, walk back to an adult listener, and tact what they had seen. In the baseline condition, no participants were able to sufficiently tact after moving 1-m from the stimulus. Then tacting was trained using vocal prompts. Through this procedure, all children acquired tact for untrained events that were remote in time and space from their mothers.