How to teach children with autism to ask questions functionally relevant:: a systematic replication.

How to teach children with autism to ask questions functionally relevant: a systematic replication. This study was a systematic replication of Williams, Perez-Gonzalez, and Vogt's study aimed to teach a child with autism to ask questions. We presented to the child boxes with pleasant objects inside. We taught him to ask, "What is in the box?" to know the name of the object, "Can I see it?" to see it, and "Can I have it?" to retrieve it. The child learned to ask the first question. When he learned to ask the second question, he stopped asking the first one. Then, we analyzed whether the child would learn, under these circumstances, to ask the three questions independently. The child learned again the first question. He also learned to ask the third one. A final probe showed that the child learned the three questions as three independent repertoires. Moreover, he generalized question asking to his everyday life. Thus, these results showed that having difficulties to ask the first two questions does not affect the final acquisition of the three questions as three functionally independent skills, appropriate to each specific context. These findings are relevant for the habilitation of children with autism and children with pervasive development delays.