The Effects of Reinforcing Tacting on the Recall of Children with Autism

Attending to and tacting stimuli in a situation may facilitate recall of that situation. To evaluate this, we showed varied slide decks of 25 black-and-white stick figures engaged in actions to four adolescents and one child with autism. Ten minutes later, we asked them to name the pictures they remembered. Using a multielement design, we compared three conditions in the picture viewing context wherein we (a) instructed the participant to view the pictures quietly, (b) prompted and reinforced tacts of the pictures, or (c) required the participant to repeat a series of letters and numbers (i.e., a blocking procedure). For four of the participants, recall was highest in the condition in which we prompted and reinforced tacts of the pictures. These data provide preliminary support for the hypothesis that prompting and reinforcing tacting stimuli enhances recall with respect to those stimuli, though several limitations and directions for future research are discussed.