Association for Behavior Analysis International

Abstract Intraverbal behavior can be observed in many typical verbal interactions between people. Perhaps some of the most obvious types of intraverbals involve answering the questions of others. Echoic, tact, and textual transfer procedures have been proven successful in establishing simple intraverbals [Braam and PolingApplied Research in Mental Retardation,4, 279–302, 1983].However, these strategies could not be applied to storytelling as it involves complex training procedures. The current study investigated the use of a novel procedure which included a chaining procedure and textual prompts to establish intraverbal behavior in the form of telling short stories to 2 boys aged 4 and 9. Results indicated that the study was effective in teaching stories to 2 children under the ASD spectrum. Keywords:Autism, Chaining, Intraverbals, Storytelling, Textual prompts Author - Meera@behaviourenrichment.com,shyniukn@gmail.com,shreyasriram9@gmail.com,rajashree@behaviourenrichment.com

Children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder may show difficulties in acquiring verbal repertoires. The Stimulus Equivalence Technology have been used as an important tool for teaching emergent verbal behavior to individuals with autism; however, few studies explored the possibility of using class-specific consequences to generate novel behaviors, especially vocal responses. The present study used a multiple-probe design across two sets to investigate the effects of a listener training embedded with auditory class-specify consequences in the emergence of intraverbal and tact responses. Two children with autism were exposed to pretests and posttests of intraverbal and tact behaviors. Participants were taught to select one of three pictures upon hearing a verbal Sd (for instance, choosing the Australian flag after the experimenter says “point to where the koala live”). Correct responses were followed immediately by a dictated name provided by the experimenter (an auditory specific consequence, e.g., “Australia”). Results showed the emergence of intraverbal relations (e.g., saying “Australia" upon hearing “tell me where the koala live”) and tact relations (saying “Australia” when asked “what is it?”). Thus, embedding auditory specific consequences in listener training may be an effective procedure to generate emergent vocal behavior (intraverbal and tact relations).

Role modeling and imitation are important elements to learning processes of children. When imitations become constant, language and motor skills will be permanent. EchoicAn elementaryverbal operantinvolving a response that is evoked by averbaldiscriminative stimulus that has point-to-point correspondence and formal similarity with the response. The children under the study had no words as echoic. Echoic can be taught by transferring from the mand, motor imitation, songs, “sound play” and pairing with reinforcement. In this study, we analyze the efficacy of using motor imitation skills to increase echoic skills in children under 4 years of age. The children under the experimental group were 4 children from 3 different institutes (“Group A”). The control group (those that do not receive any treatment) consisted of 4 more children who did not have 40 motor imitation skills (“Group B”). Training was given in a set-up which was individualized (1:1). 40 imitation drills (including gross, fine, motor imitation with objects & oro motor) are targeted over a period of 3 months. Therapists are asked to maintain data on number of motor imitation skills achieved during the 3-month period. After 40 drills are achieved (measured by 3 consecutive independent cold probe responses over 3 sessions), they were taught to echo CVCV words using Kauffman procedure. The comparative control group of another 4 kids (Group B) were taught echoic directly, without meeting the pre-requisite of 40 imitation skills. At the end of 3 months, data on achievement of echoic skills between Groups A & B is analyzed. The study did demonstrate that after teaching imitation skills the children acquired better Echoic skills. Acronyms-Echoic,Imitation ,Oro-motor ,gross motor . Authors meera@behaviourenrichment.com,harikapatlolla@yahoo.com,thirdeye.aba@gmail.com