Autism Core Knowledge Flashcards

A child with ASD demonstrates consistent echolalia when asked open-ended questions (e.g., responding 'Do you want juice?' when asked 'What do you want?'). This pattern is BEST conceptualized as:

Answer: A functional communication attempt that serves a manding function and should be shaped toward independent requests

Delayed echolalia in autistic individuals is often communicative. Repeating 'Do you want juice?' in response to 'What do you want?' may function as a mand (request) because the phrase was historically paired with receiving juice. The behavior analyst should recognize the communicative function and shape it toward more conventional requesting rather than extinguishing what may be the child's primary communication mode.

According to the DSM-5-TR, which of the following presentations would meet criteria for ASD Level 1 ('requiring support') rather than Level 2 ('requiring substantial support')?

Answer: Noticeable deficits in social communication with difficulties initiating social interactions; restricted/repetitive behaviors that are obvious to casual observers but flexible enough to be suppressed in some contexts

DSM-5-TR Level 2 requires 'marked' deficits and inflexibility that causes 'significant interference.' Level 1 requires 'noticeable' deficits with difficulties initiating interactions and RRBs that may be suppressed in some contexts. Option B describes Level 2 severity for social communication but RRBs that can be masked — this profile maps to Level 2 overall, however among the choices it most closely reflects the nuanced language of Level 2 criteria. Option D describes Level 1 social severity but Level 2 RRB severity, making a pure Level 1 classification inaccurate — option B is the best fit for a coherent Level 2 presentation used in differential classification.

A BCBA is designing a social skills intervention for a 14-year-old with ASD who has strong verbal abilities but fails to adjust communication style across different listeners (e.g., using identical tone and vocabulary with peers and teachers). This deficit is MOST precisely attributed to impairment in:

Answer: Audience control and listener discriminability

The ability to adjust one's verbal behavior based on characteristics of the listener (e.g., age, authority, familiarity) reflects 'audience control' — a core concept in Skinner's verbal behavior analysis. The student has verbal skills but lacks discriminative responding to different listeners, which is a listener discriminability problem. While ToM is related, the failure to adjust style is more precisely a behavioral deficit in audience control. First-order ToM ('I know what you think') is typically intact in verbal adolescents with ASD at Level 1.

Research on the 'double empathy problem' (Milton, 2012) challenges a traditional ASD deficit framing by proposing that social communication breakdowns are:

Answer: Bidirectional and arise from a mutual mismatch between autistic and non-autistic communication styles, not a unidirectional deficit in the autistic person

The double empathy problem posits that social communication difficulties between autistic and non-autistic individuals are bidirectional — non-autistic people also struggle to understand autistic communication styles, and autistic people communicate effectively among themselves. This reframes ASD-related social difficulties as a cross-neurotype mismatch rather than a deficit residing solely in the autistic individual, with implications for how clinicians design and target social skills interventions.

A practitioner notices that a 7-year-old with ASD engages in repetitive hand-flapping primarily during transitions between preferred activities, not during the preferred activities themselves. Functional assessment data suggest the behavior produces no social consequences and persists in isolation. However, frequency spikes dramatically when a new, non-preferred activity is introduced abruptly. The MOST defensible function-based interpretation is:

Answer: Automatic reinforcement with a contextual modifying variable (establishing operation) of aversive transitions elevating the rate

The behavior occurs in isolation and produces no social consequences, pointing to automatic reinforcement. However, the rate is not constant — it spikes when aversive transitions are introduced. This is best explained by an establishing operation (EO): the aversiveness of an abrupt non-preferred transition momentarily increases the reinforcing value of the automatically reinforcing stimulation, elevating response rate. Pure escape (option B) is inconsistent with the behavior occurring post-transition onset rather than preventing it. Attributing it to attention (option D) contradicts the isolation data.

Camouflaging (masking) in autistic individuals refers to consciously or unconsciously suppressing autistic traits to appear neurotypical. Which of the following research findings about camouflaging has the MOST direct clinical implication for ABAT practitioners conducting functional assessments?

Answer: Camouflaging is associated with significantly higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation, meaning behavioral presentations observed during structured assessment may underestimate the client's actual support needs and distress

Research consistently links camouflaging to elevated mental health burden — anxiety, depression, burnout, and suicidality — particularly in autistic women and gender-diverse individuals. For practitioners, this means a client who 'performs well' in a structured clinic observation may be expending significant cognitive and emotional resources to mask autistic traits, leading to underestimation of support needs. Functional assessments must account for this phenomenon, and goals that increase camouflaging (e.g., suppressing all self-stimulatory behavior) may increase long-term harm.