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Abstract
All individuals encounter items, activities, events, or actions that they find aversive or do not prefer. Therefore, it is important to teach those individuals appropriate means of refusal of those aversive stimuli, especially for individuals with developmental disabilities, particularly those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), who exhibit social communication deficits as part of their diagnosis. The purpose of this study was to investigate if FCT using negative reinforcement could be used to train the mand “No” when presented with a non-preferred activity without conducting a full functional analysis. This study also investigated if trained mands will generalize to untrained non-preferred activities. Using three non-preferred activities, researchers conducted mand training using negative reinforcement across three participants in a kindergarten special education classroom. Results indicated that this procedure was successful for two out of three participants. For both participants, the mand response for refusal generalized to three additional untrained activities.