Promoting generalization of mands for information used by young children with autism

We investigated the extent to which mands for information taught using structured teaching trials (i.e., verbal discriminative stimulus, verbal prompts, and programmed consequences) while contriving the establishing operations to young children with autism generalized to novel stimuli and settings. Three students with autism participated in this study and were taught to mand for information using “where” during structured teaching trials. We conducted generalization probes in a hierarchical fashion to determine the extent to which generalization occurred. Manding for information did not completely generalize to natural settings when specific verbal cues were removed and that training in the natural setting in the absence of verbal cues was required for all three participants before generalized responding occurred.