Acquisition of peer manding and listener responding in young children with autism

• Preschoolers diagnosed with ASD were taught to request items needed to complete a task from peers.
• The peer listeners, also diagnosed with ASD were taught to respond to peer's requests.
• The training procedures were effective to teach both peer requesting and listener responding.
• However, these skills did not generalize to a novel peer, for all participants.

Individuals diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder demonstrate impairments in communication and social interaction. The importance of acquiring those skills, especially as young children, has been well established in the literature. Peer-mediated interventions have recently received much attention; however, its use is contingent upon access to typically developing peers, which is not always the case in all educational settings. Thus, it is often necessary for specific instruction to occur for matched peers when conducting instruction for peer-mediated communication. However, strategies for teaching these skills have not adequately addressed the role of the listener, especially that of a matched peer, within the instructional setting. Listener responding is a required component for teaching this type of behavior, for without it these emerging skills may not produce reinforcement. Once taught, the communicative skills will require reinforcement from peer-listeners if those skills are to be maintained beyond the instructional setting. The current study arranged for young children with autism to play both the speaking and listening roles in the acquisition of peer-mediated communication (i.e., mand) skills, within a multiple baseline design. The study resulted in increases in independent peer manding and listener responding in all three children.