Emergent Intraverbal and Reverse Intraverbal Behavior Following Listener Training in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

We evaluated whether intraverbal and reverse intraverbal behavior emerged following listener training in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Six participants were each taught three sets of three “when?” questions in listener training. A multiple baseline design across behaviors (stimulus sets) was used to assess the effects of listener training. Results showed that intraverbal behavior emerged following listener training for five out of six participants. One participant received additional listener training and intraverbal training before intraverbal behavior emerged. Furthermore, reverse intraverbal responding occurred across all three sets of questions for three of the six participants. Establishing listener behavior may be a pathway for emergent intraverbal and reverse intraverbal responding in children with ASD. Future research could examine what skill repertoire may facilitate such transfer.     

A Comparison of Textual and Echoic Prompts on the Acquisition of Intraverbal Behavior in a Six-Year-Old Boy with Autism

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - A comparison of textual and echoic prompts was conducted to determine which form of prompts was more effective for teaching intraverbal behavior to a 6-year-old...     

A Comparison of Stimulus-Stimulus Pairing,Standard Echoic Training,and Control Procedures on the Vocal Behavior of Children With Autism

An alternating treatments design was employed to compare the effect of stimulus-stimulus pairing, standard echoic training, and a control condition on the vocal behavior of 3 preschoolers with autism. Data were recorded during pre- and postsession observations. During the stimulus-stimulus pairing condition, the experimenter''s vocal model was paired with the delivery of a preferred item. During the standard echoic training condition, the experimenter presented a vocal model and delivered a preferred item contingent on an echoic response. During the control condition, the experimenter presented a vocal model and, after a 10-s delay, presented a preferred edible item. Results from the post-session observations during the stimulus-stimulus pairing condition showed an immediate but temporary increase in the target sound for 1 participant only. Implications and suggestions for future research are provided.     

Using Intraverbal Prompts to Establish Tacts for Children with Autism

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - Some children with autism have difficulty acquiring tacts, despite their ability to mand, echo words, and imitate actions. The current study focused on 2 nonvocal...     

Further Evaluation of Prompting Tactics for Establishing Intraverbal Responding in Children With Autism

We compared prompting tactics to establish intraverbal responding (question answering) in four boys with autism. Based on the results of intraverbal, textual, echoic, and tact pretests, we compared vocal and picture prompts with three participants, and textual, vocal, and picture prompts with one participant. We also evaluated repeated acquisition with different question sets, and included a concurrent-chains arrangement, in which initial link selections determined which prompting procedure occurred in the terminal link. All the prompting procedures were effective in establishing intraverbal responding, but vocal prompts resulted in the fewest trials to criterion for all four participants during the initial prompt comparison. However, the results were less consistent for the second comparison. The concurrent chains arrangement revealed a clear preference for picture prompts for one participant, but the results for the others were inconclusive.     

Conditional Discrimination in the Intraverbal Relation: A Review and Recommendations for Future Research

Conditional discrimination is inherent in the intraverbal relation when one verbal stimulus alters the evocative effect of another verbal stimulus and they collectively evoke an intraverbal response. Rarely in research on conditional discriminations have both conditional and discriminative stimuli been vocal verbal and rarely have the responses been topography-based. Making conditional discriminations in intraverbal behavior is a repertoire that is often delayed in children with autism and other developmental disabilities. Reviewed in this paper is research on teaching intraverbal behavior, auditory conditional discriminations, and restricted stimulus control. The purpose of these reviews is to identify the extent to which previous researchers examined conditional discriminations in the intraverbal relation and to recommend directions for research in this area.     

Use of a Modified Chaining Procedure with Textual Prompts to Establish Intraverbal Storytelling

Echoic, tact, and textual transfer procedures have been proven successful in establishing simple intraverbals (Braam and Poling Applied Research in Mental Retardation, 4, 279–302, 1983; Luciano Applied Research in Mental Retardation, 102, 346–357, 1986; Watkins et al. The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 7, 69–81, 1989). However, these strategies may be ineffective for some children due to the complexity of the targeted intraverbals. The current study investigated the use of a novel procedure which included a modified chaining procedure and textual prompts to establish intraverbal behavior in the form of telling short stories. Visual prompts and rule statements were used with some of the participants in order to produce the desired behavior change. Results indicated that the procedure was effective for teaching retelling of short stories in three children with autism.     

Increasing Vocal Variability in Children with Autism Using a Lag Schedule of Reinforcement

Variability has been demonstrated to be an operant dimension of behavior (Neuringer, 2002; Page & Neuringer, 1985). Recently, lag schedules have been used to demonstrate operant variability of verbal behavior in persons with a diagnosis of autism (e.g., Lee, McComas, & Jawor, 2002). The current study evaluated the effects of a Lag 1 schedule on the vocal variability of 2 nonverbal children with a diagnosis of autism. Results showed systematic increases in variability during the Lag 1 schedule. Implications of lag schedules for speech and language training are discussed.     

Using Transfer Procedures to Teach Tacts to a Child with Autism

This applied study attempted to evaluate a combination of transfer procedures commonly used to teach tacts to children with autism. A receptive to echoic to tact transfer and an echoic to tact transfer procedure were combined during 5-min instructional sessions to teach tacts to a seven-year-old vocal child with autism. A multiple baseline design across three sets of ten tacts was used. Without the teaching procedure, the child acquired no target tacts. With the 5-min teaching procedure implemented first with Set 1 then with Sets 2 and 3, respectively, the child acquired thirty new tacts over sixty teaching sessions. The results have wide application for children with and without autism who need instruction to learn tacts.     

Rule-Governed Behavior: Teaching a Preliminary Repertoire of Rule-Following to Children With Autism

Rule-governed behavior is generally considered an integral component of complex verbal repertoires but has rarely been the subject of empirical research. In particular, little or no previous research has attempted to establish rule-governed behavior in individuals who do not already display the repertoire. This study consists of two experiments that evaluated multiple exemplar training procedures for teaching a simple component skill, which may be necessary for developing a repertoire of rule-governed behavior. In both experiments, children with autism were taught to respond to simple rules that specified antecedents and the behaviors that should occur in their presence. In the first study, participants were taught to respond to rules containing "if/then" statements, where the antecedent was specified before the behavior. The second experiment was a replication and extension of the first. It involved a variation on the manner in which rules were presented. Both experiments eventually demonstrated generalization to novel rules for all participants; however variations to the standard procedure were required for several participants. Results suggest that rule-following can be analyzed and taught as generalized operant behavior and implications for future research are discussed.     

A Comparison of Topography-based and Selection-based Verbal Behavior in Typically Developed Children and Developmentally Disabled Persons with Autism

This study is a replication of Sundberg and Sundberg (1990) that compared topography-based verbal behavior with selection-based verbal behavior in terms of acquisition, accuracy, and testing for the emergence of a new verbal relation. Participants were three typical children and three developmentally disabled persons with autism. The study sought to determine which paradigm (topography-based or selection-based) resulted in more rapid acquisition of tacts and intraverbals, which was associated with the fewest errors, and which paradigm resulted in the emergence of the highest number of new verbal relations. The results of the study showed that the six participants performed quite differently from one another. Most importantly, the results from the person with autism contradicted previous findings favoring selection-based verbal behavior over topography-based approaches for teaching verbal behavior to low-functioning individuals.     

Evaluating Stimulus-Stimulus Pairing and Direct Reinforcement in the Establishment of an Echoic Repertoire of Children Diagnosed with Autism

Many children with autism do not imitate adult vocalizations, an important skill in learning to talk. Pairing adult vocalizations with preferred stimuli has been shown to increase free-operant vocalizations but effects are temporary; thus, direct reinforcement may be necessary to establish durable vocal behaviors. In Experiment 1, directly reinforced echoic responses did not increase following stimulus-stimulus pairings in three children with autism. Similarly, pairings did not increase free-operant vocalizations in Experiment 2, a replication of Miguel et al. (2002). Experiment 3 demonstrated that shaping increased vowel frequency for one participant. Results suggest that variables are yet to be delineated that influence effectiveness of a stimulus-stimulus pairing procedure on vocalization frequency and acquisition of a verbal operant following such pairings.     

Effects of a Differential Observing Response on Intraverbal Performance of Preschool Children: A Preliminary Investigation

Axe (2008) speculated that some instances of intraverbal responding might be associated with limited or delayed acquisition because they require discrimination of multiple components of verbal stimuli. Past studies suggest that acquisition of responses under control of complex, multicomponent antecedent stimuli (e.g., conditional or compound stimulus control) can be facilitated with the introduction of a differential observing response (DOR; Dube & McIlvane, 1999; Gutowski, Geren, Stromer, & Mackay, 1995). The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effects of a DOR (i.e., repeating the question) on intraverbal responding with six neurotypical preschool children. Findings included that (a) accuracy of intraverbal performance increased when the experimenter prompted a DOR; (b) 1 of 6 participants overtly emitted the DOR for a second relation in the absence of prompts, which was correlated with increased accuracy; and (c) following mastery, response accuracy was variable for 3 participants. Based on these findings, prompted DORs may offer an effective, if temporary, aid to intraverbal instruction for neurotypical preschool children.     

An Analysis of Verbal Stimulus Control in Intraverbal Behavior: Implications for Practice and Applied Research

A common characteristic of the language deficits experienced by children with autism (and other developmental disorders) is their failure to acquire a complex intraverbal repertoire. The difficulties with learning intraverbal behaviors may, in part, be related to the fact that the stimulus control for such behaviors usually involves highly complex verbal stimuli. The antecedent verbal control of intraverbal behavior may involve discriminative stimuli (i.e., discriminated operants), conditional stimulus control, and/or control by compound stimuli. Distinctions among these different types of antecedent control are presented, along with recommendations for intervention procedures that may facilitate the acquisition of intraverbal behavior.     

The Effects of Multiple-Tact and Receptive-Discrimination Training on the Acquisition of Intraverbal Behavior

The purpose of this study was to determine whether multiple-tact training and receptive-discrimination training could be used to teach thematically related vocal intraverbals to typically developing preschool children. Multiple-tact training involved teaching a child to name both the item and the category to which the item belonged. Receptive-discrimination training consisted of teaching a child to select a picture card in the presence of a question from the experimenter regarding the item or its category. When neither of these strategies resulted in substantial increases in intraverbal responses, a typical intraverbal training protocol using tact prompts was implemented. Six typically developing children participated in the study. A multiple-baseline design across word categories was used to evaluate the effects of the three training procedures. Results indicated that both multiple-tact and receptive-discrimination training had minimal effects on the strength of the intraverbal repertoire, whereas direct intraverbal training had a more substantial effect. The results provide some evidence of the functional independence of verbal operants, as well as the independence of listener and speaker repertoires. Receptive-discrimination and multiple-tact training may have facilitated acquisition of intraverbals; however, further research is needed to assess how these repertoires might interact with each other.     

Using Stimulus-Stimulus Pairing and Direct Reinforcement to Teach Vocal Verbal Behavior to Young Children With Autism

In this study the effect of a stimulus-stimulus pairing procedure was used as part of a clinical investigation to increase vocalizations for two young children diagnosed with autism. This procedure involved pairing a vocal sound with a preferred stimulus (e.g., toy) to condition automatic reinforcement. In addition, this study assessed the effects of a direct reinforcement procedure to bring a vocalization under echoic control following the pairing procedure for 1 of the participants. The results showed the pairing procedure was used successfully to increase a vocalization for one of the participants, and the vocalization was brought under echoic control.     

The Effects of Deprivation, Presession Exposure, and Preferences on Teaching Manding to Children with Autism

The effects of at least 23-hr deprivation, 5-min presession exposure, and individual preference on the acquisition of mands were investigated in these studies. Two boys who were 2.5 years old and diagnosed with autism participated in the studies. Preference assessments were conducted to identify preference levels of various toys. Toys of various preferences were then assigned to either a 23-hr deprivation or 5-min presession exposure condition for mand training. Both deprivation and preference level affected acquisition of mands. Implications for teaching children to mand are discussed.     

Reducing Palilalia by Presenting Tact Corrections to Young Children with Autism

Palilalia, the delayed repetition of words or phrases, occurs frequently among individuals with autism and developmental disabilities. The current study used a combined multiple baseline and reversal design to investigate the effectiveness of presenting tacts as corrections for palilalia. During baseline, five preschoolers with autism emitted high rates of palilalia and low rates of mands and tacts during play and instructional activities. During treatment, when experimenters presented opportunities to echoically tact actions and objects following the emission of palilalia, its frequency decreased to low and stable levels and mands and tacts increased. Functional relationships between the tact corrections and emissions of palilalia, mands, and tacts were established during reversals to baseline and treatment conditions. Similar trends in responding were found for frequency of palilalia, mands, and tacts in non-treatment settings.     

Using Instructive Feedback to Increase Response Variability During Intraverbal Training for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

We evaluated the effects of instructive feedback on the variability of intraverbal responses for two children with autism spectrum disorder. Specifically, we used an adapted alternating treatments design to compare participants’ novel responses and response combinations during an intraverbal category program across conditions with and without instructive feedback. During instructive feedback, secondary targets were presented during the consequence event of the learning trial and consisted of a therapist’s model of response variability. The results showed that participants engaged in more novel response combinations during instructive feedback conditions. We discussed the clinical implications of these results as well as areas for future research.