Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Teaching Children With Autism To Mand For Information Using Video Modeling, Courtney Dillon

Masters Theses

Skinner's taxonomy of verbal operants defines language in functional terms specifying the relevant controlling variables in terms of antecedent and consequent influences. A mand for information is a request for a specific verbal response that has momentarily high reinforcing value due to the presence of an establishing operation. Contrived establishing operations have been used for teaching mands for information, however, researchers have not yet investigated the effects of using video modeling to teach mands for information to children with autism. This study investigated the effects of video modeling with a contrived establishing operation for teaching two children with autism to …