Using Instructive Feedback to Expand Second Language of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The misconception that teaching children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) more than one language will cause delays in language acquisition could lead bilingual caregivers to not speak to their children in their heritage language. Therefore, researchers should investigate whether teaching a second language to children with ASD could hinder acquisition of communication skills. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of direct teaching of Spanish auditory-visual conditional discriminations with instructive feedback in English on the acquisition of primary targets, secondary targets, and emergent relations (i.e., Spanish and English tacts) by children with ASD. All participants' responding met the mastery criterion for the primary targets and the inclusion of instructive feedback resulted in the acquisition of English auditory-visual conditional discriminations.