Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention

This article uses examples of treatment research on declaratives to illustrate criteria for determining whether a taught behavior is a ‘‘skill’’, not just a context-bound behavior and whether the taught skill has associations with other theoretically linked skills as one type of validation evidence. The article uses data from three treatment studies to illustrate the issues and proposed criteria. The article concludes with a call to consumers and producers of treatment research to use the criteria to judge the developmental importance of treatment outcomes.