Generality in the verbal tacting of autistic children as a function of "naturalness" in antecedent control.

Two autistic children were taught to emit verbal tacts under two conditions--one employing verbal antecedent stimuli in the training process and the other employing so-called naturalistic antecedent stimuli. Although acquisition was more rapid when verbal antecedents were used, the generality of learning was substantially better for language taught under naturalistic stimulus control. Implications of these findings for the instruction of autistic children are considered in the context of current information on stimulus control.