Abstract
The purpose of the study was to use multiple exemplar training to teach empathetic responding to two children with autism. Three emotions—happiness, frustration and sadness/pain—were chosen for this purpose. Treatment consisted of verbal prompting and reinforcement of empathetic responses. Four experimenter-defined categories with discriminative stimuli were used for each emotion. The multiple exemplar component of the model consisted of teaching responses in the presence of several discriminative stimuli drawn from the predefined categories for each emotion delivered by two persons across two environments. Results were evaluated using a multiple baseline design across behaviours and indicate a systematic increase in responses with the introduction of treatment across each category for both participants. Generalization of responses from training to non-training stimuli in both participants was observed during probe trials and was maintained during follow-up probes.
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The author would like to thank Dr. Tara A Fahmie of the California State University, Northridge, for her comments and suggestions on the previous versions of this manuscript.
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All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with ethical standards of the institution and national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments.
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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants in this study.
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Sivaraman, M. Using Multiple Exemplar Training to Teach Empathy Skills to Children with Autism. Behav Analysis Practice 10, 337–346 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-017-0183-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-017-0183-y