Using intraverbal prompts to increase divergent intraverbal responses by a child with autism

A translational evaluation of component skills for the establishment of multiply controlled intraverbals

Intraverbal behavior is a type of verbal behavior in which the response form has no point-to-point correspondence with its verbal stimulus. However, the form and occurrence of most intraverbals is under the control of multiple variables. Establishing this form of multiple control may depend on a variety of preestablished skills. The purpose of Experiment 1 was to evaluate these potential prerequisites with adult participants using a multiple probe design. The results suggest that training was not required for each putative prerequisite. In Experiment 2, probes for all skills were conducted following convergent intraverbal probes. The results showed that convergent intraverbals only emerged when proficiency of each skill was demonstrated. Finally, Experiment 3 evaluated alternating training of multiple tact and intraverbal categorization. The results showed that this procedure was effective for half of the participants.

Brief Report: Increasing Intraverbal Responses to Subcategorical Questions via Tact and Match-to-Sample Instruction

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effects of tact and match-to-sample instructions on the increase and maintenance of intraverbal responses to subcategorical questions (i.e., naming multiple items in a subcategory of a category). Three Chinese children on the autism spectrum (2 boys, 1 girl, aged 6-8 years old) participated in this study. Results indicated that intraverbal responses to subcategorical questions emerged or increased for most subcategories for all three participants following the completion of instruction without direct training.

The Impact of an Intraverbal Webbing Procedure on the Emergence of Advanced Intraverbal Skills in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

This study investigates the effects of an intraverbal webbing procedure on the development of divergent and convergent intraverbal responses in 3 children with autism spectrum disorder between the ages of 4 and 7 years using a multiple-probe across-participants design. The participants were taught to list several members of a category (e.g., kitchen item, furniture) with a specific feature (e.g., handle, door) and to respond to fill-in-the-blank statements regarding the function, feature, and class of several item. Probes were conducted frequently to assess the emergence of untrained complex intraverbal responses. The results indicate that the intraverbal webbing procedure is effective for the acquisition of trained verbal responses to fill-in-the-blank statements. In addition, the emergence of convergent and divergent multiply controlled intraverbal responses was observed across untrained categories (e.g., school item, clothes).

Increasing Response Diversity to Intraverbals in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of intraverbal prompts on response diversity and novelty in intraverbals posed to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The intraverbal prompts involving function, feature, and class (FFC) of an item were used in the training of three questions requiring multiple responses. Two Chinese boys with ASD (aged 5-6 years) served as participants. A multiple-probe across three behaviors design was employed. The results indicated that the intraverbal prompts effectively increased the number of divergent responses to all three questions. Novel responses emerged at a low level while generalization to similar questions was not observed following the training.