Association for Behavior Analysis International

Individuals with ASD may experience difficulties establishing and maintaining meaningful friendships and discriminating the signs of unhealthy friendships. How individuals identify and maneuver the signs and nuances of a friendship may have lasting effects related to unhealthy, and potentially abusive or manipulative relationships. We evaluated behavior skills training (BST) to teach an individual with ASD to discriminate traits of healthy and unhealthy friendships and to provide rationales for each exemplar presented through video models. Following BST, we observed an initial increase in correct tacts of healthy traits. We added a differential observing response (DOR) to increase attending to the relevant variables depicted in the models. Following the inclusion of a DOR, Luca was able to tact both healthy and unhealthy friendship traits from video models. BST alone was insufficient for teaching Luca to provide a correct rationale for video models. Further refinements are needed to increase correct rationales for why various traits relate to healthy and unhealthy friendships. This line of research seeks to help individuals make informed decisions when seeking meaningful and healthy friendships. Learning these skills may protect against the establishment of unhealthy friendships, bullying and reduce the risk of harm for vulnerable populations (i.e., individuals with ASD).

vulnerable to bullying. Ranick et al. (2013) showed that autistic children can be taught to distinguish and respond to deceptive statements meant to exclude them from an activity or take something away from them. However, there is no research on how to teach children with autism to identify and respond to lies meant to exclude them based on gender, which is common among children. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to replicate Ranick et al. (2013) and expand on their findings by teaching autistic children to identify and respond to gendered lies. The treatment package consisted of multiple exemplar training while the investigator and the participant played board games. Three boys between the ages of six to nine years-old, diagnosed with autism, were presented with five trained deceptive statements and five novel deceptive statements. The results showed that all three participants learned to identify and respond to novel deceptive statements and that skill was maintained after one month and generalized to novel deceivers.

Deficits in social skills are considered a hallmark of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and have been shown to impact quality of life, but the research on effective social skills interventions, particularly for adolescents with ASD, is lacking. Specifically, more research is needed on complex social skills (e.g., conversation skills) and methods that promote generalization. The current study is a replication and extension of a study by Hood and colleagues (2017). We used behavioral skills training (BST) and in-vivo training to teach conversation skills to two adolescents with ASD. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the impact of those teaching procedures on the generalization of conversation skills to novel conversation partners using a multiple probe design across behaviors. Results for one participant indicated that BST was sufficient to produce generalization across three novel conversation partners. The second participants’ results indicate that for some individuals, additional intervention may be necessary for taught conversation skills to generalize to novel conversation partners.