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JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

SETTING GENERALITY AND STIMULUS CONTROL

IN AUTISTIC CHILDREN

1

ARNOLD RINCOVER AND ROBERT L. KOEGEL

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA

This study was designed to assess the transfer of treatment gains of autistic children
across settings. In the first phase, each of 10 autistic children learned a new behavior in
a treatment room and transfer to a novel extra-therapy setting was assessed. Four of
the 10 children showed no transfer to the novel setting. Therefore, in the second phase,
each child who failed to transfer participated in an analysis of stimulus control in
order to determine the variables influencing the deficit in transfer. Each of the four
children who did not transfer were selectively responding to an incidental stimulus
during the original training in the treatment room. Utilizing a reversal design, each of
the four children responded correctly in the extra-therapy setting when the stimulus
that was functional during training was identified and introduced into the extra-
therapy setting. The extreme selective responding and the resulting bizarre stimulus
control found are discussed in relation to the issue of setting generality of treatment
gains.
DESCRIPTORS: generalization, autistic children, stimulus control, transfer of con-

trol, instructional control, discrimination training, setting events, teacher behavior,
accidental contingencies

Research in behavior modification has been
primarily concerned with variables that pro-
duce behavioral change, and to a lesser extent
with variables that predict the generality of
those changes. For example, a certain treatment
procedure might be shown to be effective in
establishing or increasing appropriate behavior.
Yet, this behavior may not be performed in
extra-therapy settings or with extra-therapy

1This investigation was supported by Public Health
Service Research Grant 11440 from the National In-
stitute of Mental Health and by State of California
research grant No. 42-00000-0000832, Tide VI-B, of
the United States Elementary and Secondary Educa-
tion Act. The research was conducted in cooperation
with William Miners, Director of the Children’s
Treatment Center of Camarillo State Hospital. The
authors are grateful to a number of people for their
assistance in various phases of this project. In particu-
lar, we wish to acknowledge Dennis Russo for his
assistance and comments, and Ivar Lovaas, Crighton
Newsom, Janis Costello, and Laura Schreibman for
their helpful comments on an earlier version of this
manuscript. Reprints may be obtained from either
author, Institute for Applied Behavior Science, Uni-
versity of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106.

personnel. Recently, however, the issue of the
transfer of treatment gains across settings has
received increased attention (Baer, Wolf, and
Risley, 1968; Birnbrauer, 1968; Birnbrauer,
Wolf, Kidder, and Tague, 1965; Kale, Kaye,
Whelan, and Hopkins, 1968; Kuypers, Becker,
and O’Leary, 1968; Lovaas, Koegel, Simmons,
and Stevens-Long, 1973; O’Leary, Becker, Ev-
ans, and Saudargas, 1969; Walker and Buckley,
1972). These studies have shown that such
transfer does not usually take place without spe-
cial intervention in the extra-therapy settings.
The need for more systematic research is dearly
pointed out by Kazdin and Bootzin (1972)
who reported that transfer of treatment gains
to extra-therapy settings is the exception rather
than the rule, and that transfer should be
planned rather than depended upon as an inad-
vertant consequence of the program used.

Most attempts to produce transfer have in-
volved reinforcing the target behavior in more
than one environment. However, since a fail-
ure to transfer across environments suggests a
problem in stimulus control, investigations in

23

5

1975, 8. 235-246 NUMBER 3 (FALL 1975)

ARNOLD RINCOVER and ROBERT KOEGEL

this area seem appropriate. Autistic children
are an excellent population for the study of
stimulus variables that may influence transfer
across settings because their responding is ex-
tremely inconsistent across environments. Fur-
ther, several studies relate their behavioral in-
consistency to deficiencies that the children
show when confronted with multiple stimulus
inputs (Frith and Hermelin, 1969; Koegel
and Rincover, 1974; Koegel and Schreibman,
1974; Koegel and Wilhelm, 1972; Lovaas and
Schreibman, 1971; Lovaas, Schreibman, Koe-
gel, and Rehm, 1971; Schreibman, 1975;
Schreibman and Lovaas, 1973). Specifically,
many of these studies found that when an autis-
tic child was trained to respond to a complex
composed of multiple stimuli, only one element
of the stimulus complex would acquire control
over the child’s responding, leaving the other
elements essentially nonfunctional. Since any
therapy environment is composed of multiple
stimuli, it seems plausible that an analysis of
stimulus control developed in autistic children
during a therapy program might shed at least
some light on their inconsistent responding
across settiings.
The present experiment consisted of two

parts. First, autistic children were taught a be-
havior in a treatment environment, and trans-
fer to novel extra-therapy setting was assessed.
Children who showed no correct responding
in the extra-therapy environment then partici-
pated in a systematic analysis of the stimulus
control acquired by various elements of the
therapy environment.

METHOD

Subjects
Ten children aged between 6.5 and 13.5

yr (mean = 10.5 yr) were diagnosed autistic
by agencies not associated with this project.
None had previously participated in research on
generalization. Each child was severely psy-
chotic and lived in an institution at the time
of this study. All were either mute or echo-

lalic, displayed no contextual speech, engaged
in a great deal of self-stimulatory behavior, and
were minimally responsive to instruction. Seven
children were found to be untestable on the
Stanford-Binet IQ test, with IQ scores esti-
mated to be less than 10. The remaining three
achieved IQ scores of 18, 35, and 40. On the
Vineland Social Maturity Scale, seven children
were placed below the 2-yr level, while the
remainder were placed at 3, 5, and 5 yr.
When a child was brought to the laboratory,

a therapist selected a behavior to teach him.
After the child learned this behavior, a ne

w

adult tested him for transfer to a novel setting.
The procedures for selecting target behaviors
and assessing transfer are described below.

Selecting Target Behaviors
The behaviors selected for treatment con-

sisted of: nonverbal imitation, where the child
would learn to imitate a behavior of the thera-
pist (e.g., raising arm) in response to the ver-
bal stimulus “Do this”; touching a body part
in response to the verbal stimulus “Touch your
(nose, chin, etc.)”; and raising the right or left
arm in response to the appropriate verbal stim-
ulus “Right” or “Left”. A particular behavior
was selected for each child by recording the
child’s responding during each of these tasks
(in the above order) and selecting the first task
where responding was consistently incorrect
(i.e., no correct responses in the first 20 trials).
For example, a child would be seated in the
treatment room and told to “Do this”, where-
upon the therapist might touch his own head.
If the child failed to respond correctly, no re-
inforcer would be given. The therapist’s com-
mand and appropriate model were repeated
until either the child responded correctly on
one trial or failed to respond correctly on 2

0

consecutive trials. If the child consistently re-
sponded incorrectly, that behavior was selected
for treatment. If the child responded correctly
on any trial, reinforcement was provided, but
the therapist would not use that task in the
experiment.

236

SETTING GENERALITY AND STIMULUS CONTROL

Training Sessions

Forty-minute training sessions were con-
ducted once per day, two days per week, until
the child acquired the appropriate behavior.
The child was seated at a table across fro

m

the therapist in a 2.5 by 2.5 m treatment room.
The therapist started treatment by prompting
the child to perform the correct behavior on
verbal command. Prompts initially consisted of
the teacher taking the child’s hand and physi-
cally guiding him through the topography of
the behavior. For example, if the teacher was
training head-touching behavior, he would first
say “Touch your head”, and then place the
child’s hand on his head and reward him with
a piece of candy. The teacher then gradually
began to delay the prompt and reduce its in-
tensity in order to transfer the control of cor-
rect responding from the prompt to the verbal
stimulus. Food and social praise were given for
all correct responses, whether prompted or non-
prompted. Incorrect responses were ignored.
Training averaged 80 trials per session. When
the child responded correctly on 20 consecutive
trials without any prompt, he participated in
the transfer test.

Transfer Test

Transfer was measured as soon as the child
had acquired the new behavior in the treatment
room. The therapist took the child outside the
treatment room, where a stranger approached
the child and led him outside the building. The
child was placed facing the stranger, standing
on the lawn surrounded by trees. The stranger
then presented the same verbal stimulus (and
modelling where appropriate) as the original
therapist. No reinforcement was given. The
transfer test consisted of 10 trials, and the
child’s responses were recorded as correct or
incorrect. For the purposes of this assessment,
one or more correct responses indicated that the
child showed some measure of transfer to the
extra-therapy setting. No correct responses in
10 trials indicated that no transfer occurred.

Each session was terminated after a transfer
test.

If a child did not transfer (i.e., no correct
responses in the extra-therapy setting), a sub-
sequent series of sessions was conducted to as-
sess the control achieved by the various stimuli
that were present in the treatment room. In
brief, we wanted to see if children who did not
transfer would respond correctly in the extra-
therapy setting when a stimulus from the treat-
ment setting was introduced outside. Specifi-
cally, various stimuli present in the treatment
room were systematically introduced outside,
and the responses of the children recorded. An
attempt was made to identify as many stimu-
lus objects and events as possible that regularly
occurred during training. Each stimulus was
then presented individually in the extra-therapy
environment, until a functional stimulus was
identified. The procedures for assessing the
control achieved by these stimuli are described
below.

Assessment of stimulus control. First, to de-
termine if the original failure to transfer was
replicable, each child who did not transfer
during the initial assessment (described above),
was again taken to the extra-therapy environ-
ment and presented with 10 additional transfer
test trials. This session was identical to the orig-
inal transfer test. If the failure to transfer was
replicated on these trials, stimulus control in
the training setting was assessed.
The assessment of stimulus control began by

introducing one stimulus from the treatment
environment into the extra-therapy setting
(e.g., the original teacher). Ten trials were
conducted with this stimulus present (whether
or not correct responding occurred), and the
child’s responses were recorded. No reinforcers
were given. If the child did not respond cor-
rectly, that stimulus was removed for 10 trials
and then a different treatment-room stimulus
was introduced. If the child did respond cor-
rectly, that stimulus was removed from the
extra-therapy environment for 10 trials and
then re-introduced for 10 more trials, in a re-

237

ARNOLD RINCOVER and ROBERT KOEGEL

versal design. The assessment of stimulus con-
trol was ended when the child was found to be
responding to a given stimulus taken from the
treatment room.

Recording and reliability. To assess whether
the recording of the child’s responses was reli-
able during training and transfer sessions, re-
liability measures were obtained for the child’s
correct, prompted, and incorrect responses in
both settings. The stranger and a naive observer
watched the training sessions through a one-
way mirror. The therapist and both observers
recorded the child’s response on every trial.
Each response was recorded as correct, prompted,
or incorrect on a precoded data sheet. Reliabil-
ity between observers was measured by the
number of agreements divided by the number
of agreements plus disagreements per session.
During transfer test trials in the outside set-
ting, the original therapist and the naive ob-
server recorded the child’s responses. These
observers could not be seen by the child. Reli-
ability between observers was measured in the
same way as during treatment. Reliability mea-
sures were obtained for all of the test sessions
in this experiment. The average reliability for
recording the child’s responses was 99.6%
(range: 98% to 100%).

RESULTS

Transfer Test

The results of the transfer test are presented
in Table 1. Six of the 10 children showed
some transfer to the extra-therapy setting, rang-
ing from 30% correct responding (Debbie)

to

80% correct responding (Kurt). It is interest-
ing to note that each of these six children re-
sponded correctly on the first trial presented in
the extra-therapy setting. The other four chil-
dren, however, did not respond correctly on
any of the transfer test trials. The six children
who transferred could not be distinguished from
the four children who did not transfer on the
basis of the task, the number of trials to crite-
rion during training in the treatment room, or

the number of reinforcers presented in the treat-
ment room.

Assessment of Stimulus Control
Figures 1 to 4 present the results of intro-

ducing treatment-room stimuli into the outside
setting for the four children who did not show
any transfer. The number of correct responses
in a block of 10 trials is presented on the ordi-
nate. Sessions are presented on the abscissa. A
description of the stimuli used and the respond-
ing of each child is given below. The original
transfer test is presented at the beginning of
each figure.

John. Before introducing treatment-room
stimuli into the transfer setting, John’s respond-
ing was again measured in the extra-therapy
environment. The second “Transfer Test” in
Figure 1 shows that there was again no trans-
fer. That is, there were no correct responses in
10 trials.
The first treatment-room stimulus introduced

outside was the original therapist. The therapist
replaced the stranger outside and conducted

10

Table 1
Description of task, trials to criterion during training,
and performance on the transfer test for each child.

Trials Gener-
to aliza-

Crite- tion
Child Task rion test

Gerard “Do this” (model raises
arm) 213 50%

Joey “Do this” (model No
touches head) 292 transfer

Kurt “Right”, “Left” 351 80%
No

John “Touch your chin” 176 transfer
No

Tommy “Touch your shoulder” 200 transfer
Debbie “Touch your head” 100 30%
Robert “Do this” (model crosses

arms) 124 70%
Taylor “Do this” (model

touches nose) 61 60%
No

Cliff “Touch your nose” 33 transfer
Maria “Clap your hands” 230 70%

238

SETTING GENERALUTY AND STIMULUS CONTROL

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

John – “Touch your chin”

3

2

1

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LULU ~ 0 ‘U U O L jC i L

– ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

‘U Uj s

‘U ‘U ‘U >OU > >m > > > > U
LL Lu. Z LL 0 U. O0 U. 0 uU.

M Cn ‘U W nC – C

Fig. 1. John. The number of correct responses per block of 10 trials during transfer tests and when treat-
ment-room stimuli were introduced into the transfer (extra-therapy) setting.

trials. The condition “Therapist” in Figure 1
shows the results of the 10 trials. John did
not respond correctly on any trial. That is, he
showed no transfer to the original therapist
when that therapist was introduced outside.
To assess whether it was necessary for John

to be in the treatment room for correct respond-
ing to occur, the next manipulation was to take
John back into the treatment room. John was
placed standing, facing the stranger in the
middle of the treatment room. The condition
“Treatment Room” shows John’s responding

on these trials. Again, no correct responses
were observed; i.e., he showed no transfer to
the treatment room when the stranger was pre-
senting the trials.
The next stimulus introduced outside was an

incidental behavior performed by the first ther-
apist in the treatment room, which was not
performed by the stranger outside. While ob-
serving training sessions we noted that in the
treatment room, the therapist showed John a
piece of candy before the start of each trial.
Specifically, the therapist started a trial as fol-

Cl,
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239

ARNOLD RINCOVER and ROBERT KOEGEL

lows. First, the therapist had his own hand in
his lap, holding a piece of candy. Next, he
raised his hand (and candy) until it was directly
in front of John’s mouth. Finally, he said
“Touch your chin”. We became aware of this
sequence of behaviors when we noticed that
John often responded at the same time or be-
fore the therapist said “Touch your chin”. Pos-
sibly, John was responding to the hand move-
ment of the therapist, rather than the verbal
stimulus. To test this possibility, the hand
movement was introduced outside and John’s
responses were recorded. The stranger started
a trial outside by raising his hand (without
candy) from his side until it was directly in
front of John’s mouth. Then the stranger said
“Touch your chin”, and recorded John’s re-
sponse. No rewards were present, so we could
rule out possible responding to the sight of
candy. John’s responding is shown in the con-
dition “Hand Movement”. For the first time
John responded correctly in the outside setting,
six times in 10 trials. At this time, the hand
movement was removed from the outside set-
ting in order to assess whether correct respond-
ing would cease when the hand movement
was removed. The third “Transfer Test” in the
graph shows that, again, no correct responses
occurred. The next manipulation was to pre-
sent the hand movement without the verbal
stimulus. In this way we hoped to find out if
John was selectively responding to the hand
movement alone. Therefore, the stranger raised
his hand at the beginning of each trial, but
did not say “Touch your chin”. The condition
“Hand Movement without Verbal” shows the
results of these trials. John responded correctly
five times in 10 trials. Additional conditions
are presented in the graph that replicate the
effect of the therapist’s hand movements on
John’s responding.

In short, the results show that John was se-
lectively responding to a hand movement of
the therapist. When John learned to touch his
chin in the original training sessions, he was
responding to the arm-raise of the therapist,

rather than to the verbal stimulus “Touch your
chin”.

Joey. Joey was first retested in the extra-ther-
apy setting to see if the previous lack of cor-
rect responding during the original transfer tests
was replicable. The results of these trials are
shown in the second “Transfer Test” in Figure
2. There were no correct responses in 20 trials.
The first treatment-room stimulus introduced

into the outside setting was an incidental be-
havior of the original therapist. When we ob-
served the therapist working with Joey in the
treatment room, we noticed that Joey’s hands
were held in his lap until a trial was started.
Specifically, the therapist started a trial as fol-
lows. First, the therapist held Joey’s hands in
his lap. Then the therapist said “Do this”. Fi-
nally, the therapist modelled the correct re-
sponse by touching his own head. We became
aware of this sequence of behavior when Joey
responded correctly at the same time or before
the teacher modelled the response. To test the
possibility that Joey might be responding to
the teacher letting go of his hands, hand re-
straint was manipulated outside in the follow-
ing manner. Since Joey was standing, the stran-
ger held Joey’s hands to his legs. Then he
started a trial by saying “Do this”. Immediately,
the stranger touched his own head, simulta-
neously removing the restraint from Joey’s
hands. The effect of introducing this stimulus
outside is shown in the condition “Restraint” in
Figure 2. Joey responded correctly six times in
10 trials. At this point, test trials were presented
without the restraint stimulus. These trials were
identical to the original transfer trials. Joey’s
responding on these trials is shown in the fol-
lowing “Transfer Test” condition. There were
again no correct responses in 10 trials. In the
next condition, we again presented the restraint
stimulus to start each trial. However, the
teacher did not say “Do this” or model the cor-
rect behavior. Specifically, the teacher merely
held Joey’s hands to his legs, then started a trial
by letting go of his hands. The condition “Re-
straint without verbal or model” shows Joey’s

240

SETTING GENERALITY AND STIMULUS CONTROL

Joey – “Do this” (Model head touching)

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Fig. 2. Joey. The number of correct responses per block of 10 trials during transfer tests and when treat-
ment-room stimuli were introduced into the transfer (extra-therapy) setting.

10
9

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241

ARNOLD RINCOVER and ROBERT KOEGEL

responding on these trials. He responded cor-
rectly on seven of 10 trials. Additional condi-
tions are presented in the graph that effectively
replicate the control of the “removal of hand
restraint” on Joey’s responding.

In summary, we found that Joey was selec-
tively responding to the teacher letting go of
his hands. When Joey learned to touch his
head during the original treatment sessions, he
was responding to the removal of the restraint
on his hands, rather than to the verbal and
modelling stimuli of the teacher.
Tommy. The second “Transfer Test” condi-

tion in Tommy’s graph effectively replicates
the lack of correct responding observed on the
original transfer test. That is, Tommy showed
no correct responding in 20 trials. In the fol-
lowing condition, the original therapist tested
Tommy outside. The condition “Therapist” in

the graph shows that Tommy did not respond
correctly to the original therapist when he was
outside. We noted peculiarities in Tommy’s
responding when we were selecting stimuli to
be introduced into the outside setting. In fact,
at one point after he had supposedly learned
the response, Tommy did not touch his shoul-
der for the original therapist in the treatment
room. One initial prompt trial was required to
get Tommy to respond correctly. The teacher
prompted him by slightly pushing Tommy’s el-
bow upwards. After one prompted trial, Tommy
again began to respond correctly for the next
20 consecutive trials. Therefore, it seemed pos-
sible that Tommy may have “hooked” on the
initial prompt trial as a stimulus for respond-
ing on future trials. To test this hypothesis we
introduced the prompted trial in the outside
setting.

Tommy – “Touch your shoulder”

Fig. 3. Tommy. The number of correct responses per block of 10 trials during transfer tests and when
treatment-room stimuli were introduced into the transfer (extra-therapy) setting.

10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2

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242

SETTING GENERALITY AND STIMULUS CONTROL

In the next condition, the original therapist
presented a prompted trial (described above)
immediately preceding a block of 10 test trials.
The condition “Therapist and Prompt” shows
the dramatic change in Tommy’s responding.
He responded correctly on all 10 test trials.
In the next condition, the stranger returned
outside. The third “Transfer Test” in the graph
shows that again no responses occurred. In the
next condition, we retested Tommy with the
original therapist without any introductory
prompted trial. Less than 5 min had elapsed
since Tommy responded correctly on each of
10 trials for that therapist. The results are
shown in the second “Therapist” condition.
Tommy did not respond correctly on any trial.
In the next condition, the original therapist
presented another introductory prompted trial.
There were again 10 correct responses in 10
trials. After 30 sec had elapsed, the therapist
presented another block of 10 trials without
the preceding prompted trial. There were no
correct responses during these trials, as shown
in the final “Therapist” condition. Finally, the
introductory prompt stimulus was re-introduced.
For the third time, the original therapist pre-
sented the prompt stimulus. The third “Thera-
pist and Prompt” condition shows that Tommy
again responded correctly on each of the 10
trials following the introductory prompted
trial. These results were then replicated with
two additional strangers (“Strangers 2 and 3”
in the figure). The remaining conditions in the
graph demonstrate and replicate that Tommy
selectively responded on the basis of the initial
prompted trial with each adult, rather than to
the verbal command “Touch your shouder”.

Cliff. We conducted a second transfer test
for Cliff. The results of this test are shown in
Figure 4. There were no correct responses in
20 trials.
The first treatment-room stimulus introduced

into the transfer setting was the therapist. The
condition “Therapist” shows that no correct re-
sponses were observed during 10 trials. At this
time, Cliff was taken back into the treatment

room by the stranger. They were standing in
the middle of the room away from the table
and chairs. Ten trials were presented and, again,
no correct responses were observed.

The table and chairs were the next treat-
ment-room stimulus introduced into the outside
setting. They were brought outside and placed
on the lawn. Cliff and the stranger stood facing
each other across the table. Each was standing
in front of a chair. The dramatic change in
Cliff’s responding is shown in the condition
“Table and Chairs”. Cliff responded correctly
seven times in 10 trials. At this point, the table
was removed to see if the presence of the chairs
was sufficient for correct responding to occur.
The condition “Chairs” shows that no correct
responses occurred during 10 trials. Additional
trials are presented in the graph, which ef-
fectively replicates the control of the table on
Cliff’s responding. Similar to the three previous
children, these data show inappropriate stim-
ulus control. However, Cliff’s responding is
slightly different, since only the table and
chairs combined with the verbal stimulus would
evoke a correct response. Nevertheless, his re-
sults are similar in that they demonstrate bi-
zarre stimulus control, differing considerably
from what a typical therapist might expect to
occur during treatment.

DISCUSSION

This experiment assessed the transfer of be-
havior changes in autistic children across set-
tings. Ten children learned new behaviors in
the treatment room, and responding in a novel
extra-therapy setting was recorded. The treat-
ment gains of six children showed some trans-
fer across settings, while the remaining four
children failed to transfer. The latter four chil-
dren did not perform any correct responses on
either the original transfer test or on subse-
quent replications of the transfer tests.
The four children who failed to transfer par-

ticipated in an analysis of stimulus control. Dur-
ing the original training, these children were

243

ARNOLD RINCOVER and ROBERT KOEGEL
10
9

(n

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CL

CR)

m

I-
0
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8
7
6
5
4
3
2
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Qiff “Touch your nose”

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Fig. 4. Cliff. The number of correct responses per block of 10 trials during transfer tests and when treat-
ment-room stimuli were introduced into the transfer (extra-therapy) setting.

selectively responding to an incidental stim-
ulus in the treatment room. When that stimu-
lus was presented in the extra-therapy setting,

each child responded correctly. That is, in order
to bring about the transfer of treatment gains
to extra-therapy setting, it was necessary that

w
0

244

SETTING GENERALITY AND STIMULUS CONTROL 245

the stimulus that came to control responding in
the treatment setting was also present in the ex-
tra-therapy setting.

It should be noted that the study was con-
ducted in a laboratory setting approximating
clinical conditions, and that only one behavior
was used for each child. It is possible that these
conditions may to some extent limit the exter-
nal validity of the findings.
The results show that four children did not

transfer because they were not responding to
the appropriate cues during training. For ex-
ample, when the teacher said “Touch your
chin” and then the child proceeded to touch
his chin, we assumed that the child was re-
sponding to what the teacher said. The assess-
ment of stimulus control showed this assump-
tion to be incorrect. This did not, however,
seem to be an unreasonable assumption. When
teaching other populations of children, teachers
generally do not worry about the child re-
sponding to an incidental hand movement to
the complete exclusion of the teacher’s instruc-
tion and the rest of the treatment environment.
Autistic children may, therefore, be showing
extreme overselectivity, which results in very
restricted stimulus control. Any therapist work-
ing with autistic children must ensure that the
child learns a new behavior on the basis of
the stimulus by which the therapist desires to
achieve control. Perhaps procedures that use
multiple therapists in multiple settings (e.g.,
Stokes, Baer, and Jackson, 1974; Wahler,
1971) would help by making it difficult for
idiosyncratic and unreliable stimuli to acquire
control over appropriate responding.

It is also interesting to look at the amount
of correct responding that occurred in the extra-
therapy setting during the assessment of stimu-
lus control. The stimuli that produced correct
responding in the transfer setting did not pro-
duce 100% correct responding. For example,
John responded correctly at 60%, 50%, 80%,
and 60% to the hand movement. The fact
that he did not respond at 100% to this stimu-
lus may indicate that extinction may have been

occurring because no reinforcement was being
given in the transfer setting. It is also possible
that, for John, a generalization gradient may
have formed around the hand movements of
the original therapist, but not around other
stimuli in the therapy environment. An inves-
tigation of the generalization gradients of au-
tistic children may prove to be of interest.

Finally, it should be pointed out that a ma-
jority of the children in this study did show
some transfer to the extra-therapy setting with-
out any special intervention, although the
amount of correct responding in the extra-ther-
apy setting varied to a great extent. While we
do not know whether or not these six children
were also responding selectively, or even if they
were responding to the appropriate instruction
of the therapist, it is apparent that they had
learned to respond to a training-room stimulus
that was also functional in the extra-therapy
setting. In this case, where children do ini-
tially transfer, the question may become one of
how to maintain treatment gains in extra-ther-
apy settings, rather than how to produce trans-
fer. Perhaps the distinction between producing
transfer and maintaining correct responding in
transfer settings is an important one to make.
The problem of transfer may require different
treatment procedures than for maintenance. For
autistic children, both problems may be rele-
vant. Additional studies addressing these issues
are in progress in our laboratory.

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Received 5 November 1974.
(Final acceptance 17 March 1975.)