Teaching children with autism to tell socially appropriate lies.

This study used a nonconcurrent multiple baseline across participants design to evaluate the use of rules, role-play, and feedback for teaching 3 children with autism spectrum disorder to tell socially appropriate lies when (a) presented with an undesired gift and (b) someone's appearance changed in an undesired way. The intervention was effective in teaching use of socially appropriate lies, and generalization to untrained people and gifts or appearances was observed.