Use of Preferred Stimuli as Receptive Identification Targets for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), in addition to core deficits in social communication, tend to devote attention to a restricted range of environmental events. Embedded interest interventions are used to establish one’s motivation to participate in low-preferred or neutral activities. We designed this single-case research study to evaluate the use of interests as receptive identification targets for children with ASD in the context of an intervention with added components as needed.

We compared the use of high- versus low-preferred receptive identification targets on receptive identification acquisition, stimulus generalization, and generalization to labels. We also evaluated ancillary variables (i.e., eye gaze, response attempts, and challenging behaviors) to examine if embedding interests acted to establish motivation for task engagement. An adapted alternating treatment design was used with changing conditions and reversal design.

Two children acquired more high-preferred receptive identification targets in fewer trials overall compared to low-preferred targets, one of whom only showed marginal improvements in the HP condition relative to the LP condition. A third participant had no improvements in either condition. All participants demonstrated increased engagement in the high-preferred condition relative to the low-preferred condition. Participants who mastered targets showed some improvements in generalization probes, primarily for HP targets.

Practitioners may consider beginning with high-preferred targets in receptive identification programs for children with ASD, but side effects should be monitored in tandem with acquisition outcomes.