A Preliminary Analysis of Joint Control Procedures to Teach Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder to Report Missing Items.

Teaching procedures developed from a joint control analysis have been effective for teaching a variety of listener and matching responses to children with autism spectrum disorder. The analysis suggests that children are taught to respond to the saltation in response strength from the confluence of the response products of two different verbal operants of the same form (i.e., the onset of joint control). However, a joint control analysis and an analysis of response strength can extend further into developing teaching procedures for speaker behavior and more complex phenomena, such as memory. The purpose of the present study was to provide a conceptually systematic, behavior-analytic approach to a memory task that involved intraverbally controlled responses to a question about missing items. The teaching procedures, informed by a joint control analysis, were shown to be effective in teaching two children with autism spectrum disorder to successfully respond to the question, "What's missing?" after having observed an array of items in which one item was subsequently excluded. Future research can rely on these findings to teach important functional and adaptive skills to children with autism. Applications: • Demonstration of teaching a problem-solving skill (i.e., "remembering"). • Demonstration of teaching speaker behavior (intraverbally controlled response) using a joint control analysis. • Response strength is inferred as a controlling variable with children with autism spectrum disorder. • Demonstration of how teaching a joint control repertoire increases the overall efficiency of instruction by producing a generative response repertoire.