Teaching children with Autism Spectrum Disorder to mand “What is it?”

In general terms a mand is a requesting response. Teaching children with autism to mand for information is often a difficult task given their language deficits. The present study examined a procedure consisting of contrived motivating operations, prompt fading, manded consequences, error correction, and a brief preference assessment for teaching the mand “What is it?” A modified multiple-baseline design across situations was used to evaluate the teaching procedure. Each of three children with Autism Spectrum Disorder learned the mands and generalized to situations, activities, scripts, the natural environment, and over time.

► Teaching children with autism to mand for information is often a difficult task.
► We taught the mand “What is it?” to children with autism.
► The procedure consisted of contrived CMEOs, prompting, and consequences.
► The results demonstrated strong internal validity.
► Generalization to CMEOs, activities, scripts, natural environment, and time occurred.