This study investigated the effects of tact prompts on the acquisition and retention of divergent intraverbal responding to categorical questions involving conditional discriminations. A 6-year-old boy with autism participated in the study. A multiple probe design across behaviors was used. A tact-prompt procedure was implemented. The results suggested that the tact-prompt procedure was effective to establish and increase the number of divergent intraverbal responses to questions across two categories. The child spontaneously emitted novel responses during training and generalization probe sessions, indicating occurrences of response generalization after divergent intraverbal training. Maintenance probes showed that divergent intraverbal responses were maintained at high levels for all target categorical questions 3 weeks after the completion of training.

This is a case study report focusing on qualitative improvements in social and emotional communications of two children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) who participated in a behavioural art programme. This study took place in a classroom located in an autism research centre affiliated with a university in the central area of Taiwan. Two 6-year-old boys with autism were referred to this programme because of their poor social skills and frequent emotional outbursts both at home and in school. The art programme, consisting of opportunities to increase social communication skills with a behaviour-analytic instructional methodology, was implemented once a week for a total of seventeen sessions. Qualitative improvements in social and emotional communications were analysed from the participant’s artwork, their statements about their work, and parents’ and teachers’ reports regarding the children’s social interactions. Results indicated that this behaviourally oriented art programme helped to facilitate both the children’s expression of their own emotions as well as social interactions with each other during the art sessions. Improvement in social communication skills also became apparent at home and school.