Tacting is a critical skill that all children are expected to be able to do. The verbal behavioral definition of a tact is a label of something you see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. The antecedent for a tact is some form of stimulus and the consequence for a tact is indirect reinforcement, such as praise (Barbera & Rasmussen, 2007). The ability to tact allows a child to increase their communication and social skills, allowing them to answer questions from adults and label items in their environment. Tacting will also allow a child to increase their vocabulary, while also allowing them to be able to express themselves better. A child can tell us about covert feelings they are having (e.g., being hungry, tired, in pain). Children with autism spectrum disorder often have difficulty tacting because social reinforcement (e.g., praise, smiling) may be ineffective (Bak et. al., 2021). Due to the potential for a child's ability to tact to impact their social relationships and communication skills, it is crucial for behavior technicians, who often provide services to children with autism spectrum disorder, to effectively teach this skill. This study will analyze and compare different instructional teaching methods in the effectiveness of teaching tacts to children with autism spectrum disorder. Teaching interventions will consider how the setting may affect mastery progress (discrete trial training vs naturalistic environment training) while also looking at the different teaching methods used in each of these settings. Hypothesis for this study is that interventions taught in a naturalistic developmental behavioral intervention (NDBI) setting will aid children with ASD in meeting mastery criteria for tacting more quickly, as opposed to a discrete trial setting.
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