SARS‐CoV‐2 is the virus causing COVID‐19 and is spread through close person‐to‐person contact. The use of face masks has been described as an important strategy to slow its transmission. We evaluated the effects of coaching caregivers via telehealth technologies to teach face mask wearing to children with autism spectrum disorder. Six participants with a history of challenging behavior associated with mask wearing were recruited from different parts of the world, and trained using graduated exposure, shaping, and contingent reinforcement. By the end of the intervention, all participants wore a face mask for a period of 10 min without exhibiting challenging behavior. The skills generalized to a novel mask or a community setting. Mask wearing did not affect the percentage of oxyhemoglobin saturation of participants, and caregivers found the intervention useful. The findings support previous tolerance training treatment evaluations in children with developmental disorders exhibiting resistance to healthcare routines.

With telehealth gaining acceptance as a service delivery method, behavior analysts are now providing services to individuals worldwide. This review highlights the cultural adaptations used in ABA-based telehealth treatments for individuals with ASD outside of the United States. Nine studies met our inclusion criteria and the data were synthesized narratively. All studies reported some type of cultural adaptation, with most studies reporting changes made to the service delivery method. This included using translated materials; training in the language of the client; and matching the trainer in birthplace, ethnicity, or gender with the participants. The adaptations described in published research can serve as a resource for behavior analysts who have interest in global telehealth services. However, given the emerging nature of this area of research, it is challenging to know which adaptations are necessary to achieve optimal outcomes. The review concludes with ideas for research development in this area.

Previous studies on naming have presented the object and its name simultaneously during both training and testing, and thus the training component may establish a transformation of function directly between the object and the name. Successful tests for listener naming may thus not require the emergence of a novel (entailed) transformation of function. The current study aimed to control for this possibility by presenting the object and the name sequentially and nonsimultaneously. Eight typically developing toddlers participated in the current study. During name training, objects and names were presented nonsimultaneously, and all participants failed to emit listener-naming responses during the first test session. Subsequently, 4 participants received multiple exemplar training, which led to improvements in listener naming for all 4; and speaker naming for only 1 participant. As a control condition, the remaining 4 participants were tested repeatedly, without multiple exemplar training, and did not show any consistent improvements in their listener or speaker performances. Multiple exemplar training thus appeared to be effective in establishing generalized listener responses, which involved generating entailed transformation of functions. The strategy of using nonsimultaneous stimulus presentations could allow for greater precision in identifying the behavioral processes involved in listener-naming.

The purpose of the study was to use multiple exemplar training to teach empathetic responding to two children with autism. Three emotions-happiness, frustration and sadness/pain-were chosen for this purpose. Treatment consisted of verbal prompting and reinforcement of empathetic responses. Four experimenter-defined categories with discriminative stimuli were used for each emotion. The multiple exemplar component of the model consisted of teaching responses in the presence of several discriminative stimuli drawn from the predefined categories for each emotion delivered by two persons across two environments. Results were evaluated using a multiple baseline design across behaviours and indicate a systematic increase in responses with the introduction of treatment across each category for both participants. Generalization of responses from training to non-training stimuli in both participants was observed during probe trials and was maintained during follow-up probes.

This study aimed to teach auditory-visual relations using exclusion training and test the emergence of exclusion responding in novel relations and naming by exclusion in four participants diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The treatment package consisted of multiple exposures to exclusion trials, prompting, and reinforcement. Four types of matching-to-sample trials (baseline, control, exclusion, and probe trials) and naming trials were used during the study. The auditory-visual matching to sample responses and naming responses of the new stimuli was tested. Three out of four participants demonstrated positive learning outcomes with the auditory-visual relations that were taught. One out of four participants demonstrated naming by exclusion. Posttest results show that exclusion responses generalized to stimuli used beyond training for the three successful participants. The results indicate that the treatment package can likely be an important teaching technology to establish exclusion responding.