Association for Behavior Analysis International

Naming across both listener and speaker responses and intraverbal responding may be defined as bi-directional because of the speaker-listener bi-directional relations involved in each of these types of behavior (Miguel, 2016). We report on three studies focusing on bi-directional operants and how, when and under which environmental conditions each may be acquired. In the first paper we present data on 49 participants between the ages of 18 months and 3 years. We investigated when and how these children acquired the listener half (uni-directional) and both the listener and speaker components (bi-directional) of Naming. In the second paper we report on experiments testing the effects of a Multiple Exemplar Instruction (MEI) procedure on bi-directional naming (BiN) and delayed drawing responses as a measure of conditioned seeing for school-aged students with Autism. Our final paper reports on the emergence of intraverbals and speaker-as-own-listener behaviors (Naming, say-do responding and self-talk) in toddlers with and without identified disabilities or delays.

Behavior analyst practitioners, supervisors and school personnel

We tested 49 children between the ages of 18 and 36 month for the presence of the listener half (uni-directional) and full (bi-directional) Naming. Students were provided with Naming experiences which included the presentation of visual and auditory stimuli (participants saw and heard the names of pictures). Tests for uni-directional and bi-directional Naming were conducted after each three sessions of Naming experiences across four different stimuli. The results are discussed in terms of differences across chronological age groups and analyses of other relations are presented.

I conducted 2 experiments investigating the relations between speaker-as-own-listener cusps and responding to reverse intraverbals. Speaker-as-own-listener (SOL) cusps include, Naming, Say-Do Correspondence and Self-Talk Fantasy Play. During a pilot experiment, I found the source of the problem in 2 participants' learning was their deficient speaker-as-own-listener repertoires. Participants in the pilot lacked Say-Do and Self-Talk developmental cusps. Following a Self-Talk Immersion intervention, Say-Do was induced for both participants and coincidentally; correct responses to reverse intraverbals emerged. In Experiment I, I continued examining relations between the speaker-as-own-listener repertoire and intraverbal responding with a statistical analysis of 35 Early Intervention (EI) and Preschool students recruited from CABAS model schools who functioned at listener and speaker levels of verbal behavior. Findings from Experiment I indicated that the presence of Say-Do Correspondence and Self-Talk were significantly correlated to correct responses to reverse intraverbals. Experiment II was a functional analysis, during which 5 participants were selected from an EI classroom due to their similar levels of verbal behavior, deficient SOL repertoire, and because they could not respond to reverse intraverbals. Results indicated a functional relation between the presence of Say-Do Correspondence and Self-Talk and correct responses to intraverbal probes for all 5 participants.