Acquisition of Multiple Interrogative Questions in a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

In this study, the multiple baseline across behaviors design was used to investigate whether the interrogative questions including "What is this?" "Where is this place?" "Who is this?" could be taught, by using the picture cards including unknown and known stimuli for a child with autism spectrum disorder who had a limited repertoire of interrogative questions. During the intervention period, if the child did not ask a question or asked an incorrect question when presented with an unknown stimulus, the instructor presented a prompt with text, to encourage the child to express the question. And the prompts were gradually faded out. As a result, the target behavior "What's this?" was maintained after the intervention by asking questions to unknown stimuli. On the other hand, "Where is this place?" was maintained immediately after the intervention, but no response occurred in the follow-up period. In addition, the number of the question "Who is this?" was decreased after the intervention and remained at a low level until the follow-up period. The reasons why the unknown stimuli presented on the picture cards used in this study was not effective in the acquisition of interrogative questions "where" and "who" were discussed.