According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevenation (CDC) (2015), Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability that causes deficits in social communication/language, social interaction and skills, and behavioral challenges. The Diagnostic Statistic Manual-5 (DSM-5) provides criteria for ASD with specific deficits and actions in three categories: communication, restricted ideas and repetitive behaviors, and social interaction (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The symptoms must be present in early childhood, which is eight years old or younger, and the symptoms together have to restrict and impair every day functioning for a child to be diagnosed with ASD (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). It is a spectrum disorder because there is a wide range of skills and different symptoms an individual with ASD can have (NIH: Autism Spectrum Disorder, 2015). The severity of the disorder also varies, so some individuals need more services than others, and different levels of treatment are used in the interventions based upon the individual (NIH: Autism Spectrum Disorder, 2015.)

There are many different interventions and teaching procedures used to aid a child to learn and to progress developmentally. Incidental teaching is a method in which the child and adult interact in a natural environment that is not structured, such as free play, where the adult will teach a skill based on the child’s interests (Hart & Risley, 1975). It is a method in which children learn labeling and language in a naturally occurring setting (Hart &Risley, 1975). Incidental teaching is child-selected since the child initiates the interaction based on a request for help from the adult (Hart & Risley, 1975). The request can be either verbal or non verbal, and if the adult chooses so, he/she can partake in incidental teaching and decide the cue and what language behavior the goal is to be obtained, and the steps if the child responds to the cue, or if the child does not respond to it (Hart & Risley, 1975). Incidental teaching is a procedure that aims for the child to learn spontaneous responses to cues in the real world (Hart & Risley, 1975).