The present study used a multiple baseline across participants design to assess whether 4 children with autism could learn a generalized repertoire of helping adults with different tasks through the use of a multicomponent teaching package. Different helping responses were taught in the presence of multiple exemplars of discriminative stimuli drawn from experimenter-defined categories of helping behavior (e.g., locating objects, putting away items, setting up an activity). During the training condition, video models, prompting, and reinforcement were used. The results showed that all 4 children learned to emit appropriate helping responses in the presence of discriminative stimuli from the helping categories used during training. Generalization of helping responses was observed in the presence of untrained discriminative stimuli during additional probe conditions. Additional pre-and postintervention generalization trials showed that the frequency of helping responses also increased in the presence of novel stimuli, in a novel setting, and with a novel instructor.

The purpose of this study was to teach empathetic responding to 4 children with autism. Instructors presented vignettes with dolls and puppets demonstrating various types of affect and used prompt delay, modeling, manual prompts, behavioral rehearsals, and reinforcement to teach participants to perform empathy responses. Increases in empathetic responding occurred systematically with the introduction of treatment across all participants and response categories. Furthermore, responding generalized from training to nontraining probe stimuli for all participants. Generalization occurred from dolls and puppets to actual people in a nontraining setting for 2 participants. Generalization was observed initially to the nontraining people and setting for the other participants, but responding subsequently decreased to baseline levels. Introduction of treatment in this setting produced rapid acquisition of target skills.

The current study examined the utility of multiple-exemplar training to teach children with autism to share. Stimuli from 3 of 4 categories were trained using a treatment package of video modeling, prompting, and reinforcement. Offers to share increased for all 3 children following the introduction of treatment, with evidence of skill maintenance. In addition, within-stimulus-category generalization of sharing was evident for all participants, although only 1 participant demonstrated across-category generalization of sharing. Offers to share occurred in a novel setting, with familiar and novel stimuli, and in the presence of novel adults and peers for all participants during posttreatment probes.

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