Self-management of sharing in three pre-schoolers with autism

The effective-ness of self-management as a procedure to leach sharing to pr eschoolers with autism was examined using a reversal design. Three preschoo l boys with autism participated in this study. Each was familiar with the t oken economy system. A token economy was incorporated into a play situation in which each student was given the opportunity to take a token each time he shared spontaneously or in response to the verbal prompt of a teacher. A ll students systematically demonstrated a higher frequency of sharing durin g self-management phases than during baseline conditions in which tokens we re provided non-contingently. This demonstrates that the mere presentation of tokens by the experimenter was not sufficient to cause behavior change. Rather, the opportunity to take tokens contingent upon correct responding a ppears to have lead to an increase in sharing for all three students. Accur acy of self-management was also examined. Accuracy of self-management was n ot high, indicating that the contingent relationship between token and resp onse may not have been the crucial variable effecting behavior change. Impl ications for future research are discussed.