A five-year-old boy diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder was recruited to participate in a study seeking to teach the safety skills of visually referencing an adult before engaging in activities that required adult supervision (e.g., climbing on furniture) and requesting permission from an adult to engage in such activities. The participant was recruited due to how well the purpose of this study aligned with his current treatment plan at an early intervention clinic. Discrimination training was used to teach the participant to know the difference between which activities he needs to request permission to engage in and which ones he does not. Activities which he did not need to request permission to engage in were made accessible to him (e.g., playing with preferred toys, running in the designated play area). Activities which he was required to request permission to engage in were signaled by related stimuli (e.g., a swing signifying that the activity of swinging was possible) but kept out of the participant’s reach until he requested permission with the help of least-to-most prompting. The results showed that he successfully mastered the skill of visual referencing as an indirect form of requesting permission and was able to reliably respond with a subtle gestural pointing prompt to a picture icon before directly requesting permission to engage in the target activities.
