Effects of time delay and requiring echoics on answering questions about visual stimuli.

An important communication skill for children with autism is answering multiple questions about visual stimuli (e.g., "What is it?" "What color is it?"). We targeted answering "What number?" and "What shape?" in the presence of numbers inside shapes, and "What is it?" and "What color?" in the presence of colored objects (e.g., a yellow cat) with 3 preschoolers with autism. In addition to a progressive time delay, we required the participants to answer the questions by echoing a keyword from the questions. For example, we taught them to answer, "What color?" with "color blue." In the context of a multiple-probe design across behaviors within a multiple-probe design across participants, the procedure was effective in increasing trained responses and producing within- and across-category generalization. The echoic may have facilitated the responses by increasing the salience of the auditory stimuli and strengthening intraverbals within autoclitic frames.