Association for Behavior Analysis International

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the extent to which a final verbal response is dependent on mediating verbal behavior (covert or overt) occurring between the offset of the discriminative stimulus and the target response. Furthermore, this study measured changes in rates of mediating verbal behavior across five exposures to a discriminative stimulus. Participants solved fifty arithmetic problems with no accompanying visual stimuli while continuously emitting overt verbal behavior. For some problems, distractor stimuli were present (experimental condition) and for others, distractor stimuli were absent (control condition). The experimenter collected data on participants’ mean latency to respond, accuracy, and rates of echoic and self-echoic responses emitted during the response interval. Participants’ mean latency to respond significantly decreased across exposures, but decreased to a greater degree in the control condition. Participants’ mean accuracy significantly increased across exposures, but increased to a greater degree in the control condition. Participants’ mean rates of echoic and self-echoic responses significantly decreased across exposures, but decreased to a greater degree in the control condition. The results of this study indicate that the necessity of verbal mediation may depend on (a) the presence of distractor stimuli, and (b) the learning history with the discriminative stimulus.

The purpose of this study is to provide content validity evidence for the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP). A national panel of 13 experts provided an evaluation of the domain relevance, age appropriateness, method of measurement appropriateness, and domain representation across the three levels of the Milestones Assessment, Early Echoic Skills Assessment (EESA), and Barriers Assessment. Overall, the content validity evidence for the VB-MAPP Milestones, EESA, and Barriers Assessment was moderate to strong across the evaluated areas although there were areas with limited or conflicting support. The evidence suggests that the scores of the VB-MAPP provide information relevant to the target behaviors of interest but a few domains may not be fully represented by their specific items.

Working Memory (WM) and Syntactic Awareness (SA) are operationally described as sequential performances. Children with deaf and hard hearing (DHH) who use cochlear implant (CI) shows deficits in WM scores compared to normal-hearing, and few studies have reported the effects of teaching on these skills. This work assessed the effects of Equivalence-Based Instruction (EBI), involving sentences, on standard measures in WM and SA, in a 10-year-old boy with DHH and CI. Data collection was remote, computer-based, during the covid-19 pandemic. EBI included conditional discriminations teaching between dictated sentences and pictures via Matching-to-Sample, and between dictated sentences and printed sentences construction via Constructed-Response-Matching-to-Sample. Three sets of sentences (regular, difficulties to decoding and pseudo - words), 4-terms (subject-verb-article-object, in Portuguese), and organized in matrices (overlapping the syntactic function) were adopted. Reading, tact, constructed-response, WM and SA tests were interposed to teaching sets. An increase was observed in speech accuracy for pictures tact (mainly with pseudo-sentences, from 49% to 98%) and WM percentile (from 0.3 to 3); SA scores decreased (from 20 to 16). The relations between the teaching of sentences, and WM and SA measures should be clarified with DHH and CI users; increasing the participants sample and adjusting designs are recommended.

Despite the vast amount of research generated by Skinner’s (1957) Verbal Behavior, elementary verbal operants are arguably understudied in basic research settings. To this point, the purpose of this study was to investigate the participation of self-stimulation (responding to one’s own visual response products) among copying text and taking dictation verbal operants by measuring performance in a novel intraverbal recall task. Using an online platform, undergraduate students completed a series of trials in which they (1) performed either a copying text or taking dictation response (dependent on group assignment), (2) completed a distractor task, and (3) recalled the initial response in an intraverbal test. Contingencies were arranged such that participants could earn points when copying text, taking dictation, and completing intraverbal tests and could avoid losing points during the distractor task. In half of the trials participants could see their response products, and in the other half they could not. Results suggest the extent to which the modality of antecedent verbal stimuli and self-stimulation participate in recall events and complex verbal behavior.

The present study sought to assist in preparing an individual with developmental and behavioral disabilities to transition into the workforce settings using stimulus equivalence training. The purpose of the training was to establish derived equivalence relations of job titles, responsibilities, and hypothetical individuals who serve in those positions. Conditional person (A) to job title (B) (A-B) relations were directly reinforced and conditional job title (B) to job responsibility (C) (B-C) relations were directly reinforced. Transitive person (A) to job responsibility (C) (A-C) and equivalence job responsibility (C) to person (A) relations were tested throughout the study. Results in a multiple baseline across employment settings (i.e., restaurant, school, and hospital) supported the efficacy of equivalence-based instruction. The participant was able to master directly trained and derived relations supporting this procedure in assisting adolescents to obtain necessary information to perform well in vocational settings.