Association for Behavior Analysis International

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of the Multiple Exemplar Instruction (MEI) on the emergence of Naming. Three kindergarten students, who were 3-5 year old males and diagnosed with Developmental Disability. A multiple probe design across participants was employed to identify a potential relationship between the independent and dependent variables. The dependent variables of this study was the emergence of Naming. The independent variable of this study was the mastery of the MEI in which listener (matching and pointing) and speaker (tact and intraverbal) responses were taught in a randomized sequence. This study was observed and recorded using the frequency recording method. The interobserver reliability (IOA) was calculated to demonstrate the reliability of the observations and the interobserver reliability was 98.5%. The intervention fidelity of this study was measured by making a total of 8 items. The intervention fidelity was 95%. Social validity was measured using the Intervention Scale Profile (IRP-15), which had a total of 15 items. The social validity score was 72.5. The results depict that the MEI effectively increased the number of correct responses to the Naming probe trials (i.e., the emergence of Naming).

The purpose of this study is to investigate if English Vocabulary words can be taught to Spanish-speaking pre-schoolers using an equivalence approach. The approach utilized simple discrimination training with compound stimuli and compound class-specific reinforcers. Results suggest that written vocabulary, pictorial representations, and pictorial reinforcers did indeed form an equivalence class. Moreover, novel pictorial examplars were also responded to class-consistently although they never appeared during training.

Current educational practices may benefit from a complex analysis of relevant verbal behaviors related to common core standards. The purpose of this study was to examine the utility of two behavior analytic programs to promote response generalization and the emergence of derived metaphorical tact extensions in a nuerotypical preschool child using the Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Language (PEAK) generalization and equivalence curriculum guides (Dixon, 2014; 2015). The participant was first trained to describe a visual stimulus (A) using a metaphor (B) e.g. what does a hot stove feel like? "lava." Following multiple exemplar training, test probes were conducted to measure response generalization to novel stimuli: e.g. when shown a picture of a hairbrush participant said it feels like "a cactus." Next, the participant was taught to select a picture (A) corresponding to tactile sensory experiences (C) e.g. tactile sensation of a hairbrush. This training promoted the emergence of untrained generalized metaphorical tact extensions (B) to describe novel tactile sensory stimuli. Sensory metaphors such as these are used in common language "my mouth is on fire" (after eating hot wings), or "my stomach is in knots" (when feeling nervous).

The Mandarin Chinese version of assessment was created for the Promoting the Emergence of Advance Knowledge, Direct Training Module (PEAK-DT). After confirming the quality and accuracy of the translation by a back-translation process, the alternate-form reliability was evaluated. Thirty-two typically developing children under 10 years old (19 males and 13 females) residing in USA, Canada, and mainland China were recruited and assessed by bilingual parents with both language versions of PEAK-DT assessments. Statistical results show that the two language versions had strong correlations between the PEAK raw scores (r = .98), the component raw scores (r ranged .93 to .98), and the component age-referenced scores (r ranged .77 to .93). Equivalence between the two versions was also demonstrated by high test-retest percentage of agreement on all assessed items, as well as scored items (88%, and 92% respectively). No significant testing effects were observed across various test-retest intervals of participants. The assessors' English proficiency had insignificant influence on the agreements too. In summary, the Chinese version of the PEAK-DT assessment exhibited cross-cultural reliability and validity, which invites more future research on the use of the PEAK system in the Chinese community affected by autism and other related disorders.

The verbal summator was a device created by B.F. Skinner to assess imitative and summative behavior, more commonly known as echoic and intraverbal behavior, respectively. In the original study, published in 1939, a set of distorted non-word sounds were played in the presence of participants, and participants were asked to write down what they heard. Recently, we replicated B.F. Skinner's 1939 study, evaluating the feasibility of a verbal summator created with modern computer technology based on the descriptions in B.F. Skinner's 1939 study. The current study further examines the use of the modern verbal summator by presenting either nonsensical speech (sounds similar to those heard in Skinner's original study) and sensical speech (ordinary dialogue) to participants. Participants entered what they thought they heard into a computer program. Responses were compared with responses from Skinner's 1939 study using the visual and statistical analyses employed by Skinner (1939). The results were largely consistent with Skinner (1939). Moreover, participants who heard sensical speech more accurately described the samples than the participants who heard nonsensical speech.

The traditional recommendation for the sequencing of speaker and listener instruction has been to teach listener, or receptive, skills prior to teaching the corresponding speaker, or expressive, skills. In a review of the research literature prior to 2011, Petursdottir and Carr (2011) concluded that research did not support this recommendation. They suggested that not only may it be more beneficial to teach speaker skills prior to teaching listener, teaching listener skills before speaker may actual hinder acquisition of speaker relations. The purpose of the current review is to identify recent literature (published since 2011) examining the efficiency of skill acquisition during, and emergence of skills from, speaker and listener instruction. We identified five articles that compared the efficiency of speaker to listener instruction, all of which support the conclusion that speaker instruction is more efficient than listener instruction in terms of trials to criterion and emergence of the untaught relation. Implications for practice and future research will be discussed.

The purpose of Skinner's (1957) text was "...to be a better was of talking about verbal behavior" (p. 456). Verbal behavior research over the past five years was reviewed to examine the methods authors use to describe the verbal deficits of their participants. Across behavior-analytic journals, research in which at least one of the verbal operants was used as the dependent variable to measures the effect(s) of an independent variable were included in this review. Measures of the participants' verbal behavior deficits were coded according to procedures employed by each author. Results indicate no systematic assessment of verbal behavior deficits, with the majority of authors relying on simple descriptions.

We tested the effects of Intensive Tact Instruction (ITI) on the establishment of the speaker component of Naming and the joining of the listener and speaker component of Naming to induce a Bidirectional Naming (BiN) (Miguel, 2016) capability for typically-developing early intervention children. We selected 3 participants, aged 1.9- to 2.3-years-old, who demonstrated the presence of listener component of Naming in the absence of speaker component of Naming to participate in the study. The independent variable was ITI, in which experimenters delivered 100 learn units of tacts daily to each participant. The dependent variables were the number of untaught speaker responses for novel non-contrived stimuli using Storybook Naming experiences, the percentage of untaught speaker responses for novel stimuli, and the number of vocal verbal operants emitted across non-instructional settings (NIS). We employed a multiple probe design across participants to test the effects of the intervention on the acquisition of BiN. Two participants demonstrated BiN for non-contrived stimuli and Participant B reliably demonstrated the presence of unidirectional Naming. While Participants A and B acquired BiN for non-contrived stimuli, we cannot suggest based on the presented findings that tact instruction functioned to induce BiN or if the establishment of the capability was a function of repeated Naming experiences. We discuss these findings with regards to repeated probes versus tact instruction and multiple stimulus control associated with a Naming cusp that is capability.

This study investigated the effects of the probability of checking on children's do-say correspondence in a card game. Five children aged six to nine years-old participated. The "doing" task consisted of counting the number of stars displayed in a card. The "saying" task consisted of reporting the number of stars (correspondently or not) to the experimenter. Using a reversal design, the number of corresponding reports was evaluated as a function of different probabilities of checking (0%, 10%, or 50%). During No Checking condition, do-say correspondence was evaluated in a situation in which no checking on the report accuracy occurred (i.e., number reported by the child was not compared to the actual number of stars in the card). During Checking conditions (10% or 50%), after reporting the number of stars, the child would be asked to show the card she/he had in hands (to compare the correspondence between the actual number of stars and the number reported by the child). Results indicated that during No Checking conditions, all children presented high levels of non-corresponding reports. When checking was implemented, levels of correspondence increased, especially during the 50% checking condition. Probability of checking showed to be a relevant controlling variable on children's report accuracy.

Functional analysis of behavior allows for the identification of the environmental conditions that influence the occurrence of behavior. Although previous researchers have conducted functional analyses of verbal behavior, relatively little work has been devoted to functional analysis of manding (LaRue et al., 2008; Lerman et al., 2005). The current study evaluated a functional analysis of manding for two participants with autism spectrum disorder. Mand-training was only implemented for participant 1. A multielement design was used during the functional analysis, and a multiple stimulus without replacement preference assessment was used to identify edible and activity reinforcers. During the test conditions of the functional analysis, reinforcers were delivered for 30 s contingent on target manding, whereas reinforcers were freely available during the control condition. During mand-training, a progressive time-delay was used to fade vocal prompts. For participant 1, rates of manding were highest in the test condition only after mand-training was implemented. For participant 2, rates of manding were highest in the test conditions. The data for both participants indicate that the functional analysis of manding was effective in identifying the function of the target responses.