title: Increasing the saliency of behavior-consequence relations for children with autism who exhibit persistent errors.
abstract: Some children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) display persistent errors that are not responsive to commonly used prompting or error-correction strategies; one possible reason for this is that the behavior-consequence relations are not readily discriminable (Davison & Nevin, 1999). In this study, we increased the discriminability of the behavior-consequence relations in conditional-discrimination acquisition tasks for 3 children with ASD using schedule manipulations in concert with a unique visual display designed to increase the saliency of the differences between consequences in effect for correct responding and for errors. A multiple baseline design across participants was used to show that correct responding increased for all participants, and, after 1 or more exposures to the intervention, correct responding persisted to varying degrees across participants when the differential reinforcement baseline was reintroduced to assess maintenance. These findings suggest that increasing the saliency of behavior-consequence relations may help to increase correct responding in children with ASD who exhibit persistent errors.
authors.affiliation: The University of Nebraska Medical Center's Munroe-Meyer Institute.
authors.forename: Wayne W
authors.initials: WW
authors.lastname: Fisher
authors.forename: Tamara L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Pawich
authors.forename: Nitasha
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Dickes
authors.forename: Amber R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Paden
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Toussaint
mesh_terms: D001521:Behavior Therapy; D002648:Child; D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000628:therapy*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012055:Reinforcement Schedule; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology
keywords: acquisition; autism; conditional discrimination; discrete-trial training; discriminated operant; error correction; response cost; schedule discrimination; second-order schedule