Abstract
The current study evaluated a procedure used to teach two children with autism to ask “why” questions maintained by causal information about an event. To increase the value of information as a reinforcer, the experimenter denied access to preferred items and did not provide a reason for the denial. Participants were taught to ask “why” questions and were provided with information that led them to access preferred items. To ensure that “why” questions only occurred when the information was valuable, we included a condition wherein access to preferred items was restricted but causal information was available. Both participants learned to ask “why” questions when causal information was not available and refrained from asking “why” questions when causal information was available.
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Notes
Because the EO-absent condition seems to include variables that serve to decrease the value of information as a reinforcer and abate question-asking behaviors, referring to it as an AO condition may be more appropriate (Shillingsburg et al., 2014).
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Acknowledgement
Portions of this study are based on a thesis submitted by the first author under the supervision of the third author to the Department of Psychology at California State University, Sacramento, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a master’s degree in Psychology: Applied Behavior Analysis. We would like to thank Tatiana Zhirnova and Areli Perez-Sotelo for their assistance with data collection.
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Completion of this study was supported by both the Speech and Language Pathology-Applied Behavior Analysis Special Interest Group and the Verbal Behavior Special Interest Group of the Association for Behavior Analysis International.
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All procedures have been approved by the Institutional Review Board at California State University, Sacramento under Protocol #17-18-40.
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Pyles, M.L., Chastain, A.N. & Miguel, C.F. Teaching Children with Autism to Mand for Information Using “Why?” as a Function of Denied Access. Analysis Verbal Behav 37, 17–34 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40616-020-00141-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40616-020-00141-2