Teaching the Function of Auditory Stimuli Using Secondary Target Instruction

It is important for children to learn to identify safety stimuli in their environment; however, there has been limited research in the field of behavior analysis related to effective and efficient strategies for teaching these skills to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Although previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of using secondary targets to teach tacts of visual stimuli, little research has evaluated procedures to teach children with ASD to tact auditory stimuli. The purpose of this study was to teach individuals with ASD the function of auditory safety stimuli using secondary target instruction across two different instructional arrangements (Condition 1-Single Presentation and Condition 2-Re-presentation). Sessions to mastery and total training time were used to evaluate the efficiency of procedures. The results showed that participants learned all primary targets that were directly taught and that the secondary targets emerged in the absence of direct teaching in both conditions. Results also suggested that Condition 1-Single Presentation, resulted in more efficient learning across target sets for both participants, with one exception.