ABSTRACT

This study examined the effects of a class inclusion intervention based on Relational Frame Theory (RFT) on the emergence, generalization and maintenance of hierarchical relational responding in 5-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Three boys with ASD who were receiving instruction at an ABA-based educational institution participated in the study. A delayed multiple baseline design across participants was employed. The intervention consisted of nonarbitrary inclusion relation training using transparent boxes to provide physical experiences in which subordinate classes were included within superordinate classes. After the mastery criterion was met, a second phase of intervention was implemented in which visual materials were removed and only verbal instructions were used. The results showed that all three children, who had demonstrated low percentages of correct responses during baseline, exhibited consistent and marked improvements in the accuracy of hierarchical relational responding across both Phase 1 and Phase 2 following the introduction of the intervention, with two of the three children achieving stable performance at 100% correct responding. These effects were generalized to untrained classes and maintained two weeks after the intervention ended. The findings suggest that concrete and nonarbitrary relational experiences based on RFT may serve as an effective instructional procedure for promoting higher-order cognitive abilities in children with ASD

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