Abstract
There have been several published reports of attempts to teach mands to individuals with developmental disabilities. Hall and Sundberg (1987) examined the nature of tact and mand. Michael (1993) investigated their functional independence by manipulating conditioned establishing operations. The present study examined the nature of establishing operations and transfer to one establishing operations to others. Two students with autism (14 years old and 12 years old) were trained to request tools by manipulating conditioned establishing operations. In addition, they were trained to request a substite when the item which they requested first was not available. We examined the independent variable for teaching such requests to the students. The results indicated that manding occured after direct mand training for substitution, which was functionally equivalent to the tools requested first to transfer stimulus control from one establishing operations to others. The results suggest that requesting responses could transfer to non-training settings or stimuli when the functions of the tools for completing activities are equivalent to each other.
