Teaching a young child with autism to request assistance conditionally: a preliminary study.

Purpose: Investigators taught a 5-year-old boy with autistic disorder and severe language delay to conditionally use requests for assistance.

Method: A within-participant multiple-probe design across 3 functional tasks was implemented in order to evaluate the child's acquisition and conditional use of requests for assistance during intervention with each task.

Results: Results indicated initial acquisition of requests for assistance followed by a brief period of overgeneralization.