Establishment of Naming in Children With Autism Through Multiple Response-Exemplar Training

In behavior analysis, naming is defined as an integration of speaker and listener behavior. After exposure to a tact, appropriate listener behavior can occur, and vice versa, without direct training. When a child is able to learn new word-object relations from observations of others' tacts both as speaker and listener, full naming has emerged. Naming consists of echoic, pure tact, impure tact, and listener responses. However, children with autism often fail to acquire the naming capability. The present study replicated the results of previous experiments that have emphasized the role of a multiple exemplar training that involves a rotation of the antecedents for the different response types that constitute naming. Further, the present study extended previous research by requiring the participants to echo the teacher's tacts of the sample stimulus during matching-to-sample training, before naming probes. Consistent with the notion that a rotation of training trials across point to, pure tact, and impure tact responses produces naming skills in children with autism, the results showed improved tacting and listener behavior following such training.