Date of Award

8-2022

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Psychological Science

Program

Other

Program

Applied Behavior Analysis

First Advisor/Chairperson

Dr. Jacob Daar

Abstract

Children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often lack perspective taking skills as evidenced by deficits in social communication and social interaction. The PEAK-T program Deictic: Single-Reversal I and You has previously been utilized to teach and establish singular I-YOU perspective taking repertoires in children with ASD, however no such studies exist for teaching plural WE-THEY perspective taking repertoires. The present study replicated the methods from a previous study (Belisle et al., 2016) to establish simple and single-reversal I-YOU deictic relations, and extended the evaluation to establish simple and single-reversal WE-THEY deictic relations. Of the four participants in this study, one participant was able to demonstrate single-reversal I-YOU and WE-THEY deictic relations. Additionally, this participant was able to demonstrate a transfer of function of these deictic relations to a novel stimulus set. Three of the four participants were unable to demonstrate mastery criteria for both I-YOU and WE-THEY single-reversal deictic relations, even after exposure to mixed training. These results indicate that some children with ASD could benefit from deictic relational training instruction through transfer of functions from I-YOU relations to WE-THEY relations, but others may require additional training and/or prerequisite skills.

Access Type

Open Access

Justification for Restricting Access

Thesis was accepted conditionally upon minor revisions

Download

Share

COinS