Teaching Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders to Answer Inferential “Why” Questions

A multiple-probe design was used to evaluate the effects of training on three children functioning on the higher end of the autism spectrum who were individually taught to answer each of three types of inferential “why” questions: (a) questions based on a three-card picture sequence, (b) questions based on a verbally presented brief story, and (c) general information questions. All children successfully learned to answer inferential “why” questions and generalized that training to the correct answering of untrained questions of the same type. However, children were not able to answer other types of inferential “why” questions until they were directly trained in that format. Implications for practice are discussed.