Association for Behavior Analysis International

All verbal behavior programming is ultimately intended to produce generative capacities for speaking and listening. Cusps represent behavior capacities that enhance or extend an individuals ability to learn and adapt to environmental complexities. Verbal behavior cusps enhance and extend the development of verbal repertoires as sources of generative speaking and listening competencies. The four presentations included in this symposium provide examples of early behavioral cusps that appear to be necessary for the evolution of verbal repertoires that lead to generative behavior.

Visual regard provides the basis for rapid and extensive learning. In this study, visual regard is shown to be a precursor skill for the development of proto imperatives, non-vocal mands. We analyze steps to induce visual regard in children who lack this skill.

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the relationship that exists between echolalia and intraverbal operant in language development. This study compared (1) the intraverbal behavior of typically developing children and children with autism; (2) the echolalic behavior of normally developing children and children with autism; and (3) the correlation between language skills and echolalia.

This study showed the acquisition of echoics/mand, mands and tacts in an initially nonverbal four year old boy with autism. The analysis tracked the emergence of tacts from mands and mands from concurrent echoic/mands

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effectiveness of a procedure - Echoic Extension- to teach echoic repertoire to non-verbal children who present challenges to acquire echoic repertoire. Echoic Extension is defined as the extended presentation of the antecedent vocal stimulus. Four nonverbal children participated in this study and all four children acquired echoic responses under vocal stimulus control. In this paper we analyzed the components that may make echoic extension an effective procedure.