Association for Behavior Analysis International

This symposium includes a collection of studies exploring procedures for promoting the emergence of untrained tacts and intraverbals for children with an autism spectrum disorders. First, Casey Nottingham will present a study evaluating different arrangements for incorporating secondary targets into learning trials during tact training for children with autism. Second, Tina Dass will present a study evaluating procedures to teach children with autism to tact olfactory stimuli. Third, Jessica Cheatham will present a study examining the effects of instructive feedback on promoting variability in intraverbal responses for children with autism. Fourth, Alice Shillingsburg will present a study evaluating the effects of interspersing mastered tact and listener skills into a teaching session, on the emergence of intraverbals for children with autism. Finally, Tiffany Kodak will discuss interesting components of each study, and describe future areas of research related to skill acquisition training for children with an autism spectrum disorder.

The current study examined the effectiveness and efficiency of presenting additional targets in learning trials for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Specifically, we compared conditions in which (a) an additional target was presented in the antecedent and consequence portion of the same learning trial, (b) two additional targets were presented in the consequence portion of the same learning trial, (c) a single additional target was presented within the consequence portion of a trial, and (d) no additional targets were presented in a trial. The results demonstrate that participants acquired the majority of additional targets that were presented in the absence of prompts and reinforcement. These findings replicate and extend the previous research in this area by demonstrating that the presentation of additional targets within learning trials may result in more efficient skill acquisition than a typical discrete trial instruction format for individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

Research on tact acquisition by children with autism spectrum disorder has focused on teaching the identification of visual stimuli. It is also important to evaluate procedures for teaching tacts of stimuli in other modalities (e.g., olfactory, tactile). The purpose of the current investigation was to evaluate the effects of an echoic-to-tact transfer of stimulus control procedure, multiple exemplar training, and the addition of secondary targets on the acquisition of item and category tacts of olfactory stimuli with three children with autism spectrum disorder. An adapted alternating treatments design (Sindelar, Rosenberg, & Wilson, 1985) was used to evaluate the effects of the intervention. All participants learned the item and category tacts following intervention and some generalization of the category tacts was demonstrated with each participant.

Instructive feedback is a teaching procedure that involves presenting a secondary target during the learning trial. Previous research has shown that learners will acquire the secondary targets in the absence of direct reinforcement. We used an adapted alternating-treatments design to compare variability in intraverbal responses across a condition with and without instructive feedback for four children with autism spectrum disorder. In both conditions, the therapist provided an instruction for the child to list items from a category, and in the condition with instructive feedback, the therapist modeled response variability during the consequence portion of the trial. Three of four participants provided more novel response combinations in the condition with instructive feedback. Findings suggest that instructive feedback may be useful for increasing variability in intraverbal responses for children with autism spectrum disorder.

The present study evaluated the emergence of intraverbal responses for two children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Prior to Experiment 1, both children could tact the name and function of 12 different picture stimuli and select the pictures by name and function; yet, they failed to demonstrate intraverbals related to the function of the items (e.g., "What do you do with item?" and "What do you use to function?"). Following Baseline, Interspersal Treatment was provided which consisted of the presentation of the previously mastered tact, tact function, listener, and listener by function prior to a probe trial for the target intraverbals. Results showed that Interspersal Treatment led to the emergence of all the intraverbals not emitted in Baseline for both participants. In Experiment 2, the emergence of intraverbals was evaluated for one participant as tact function and listener by function responses were trained. Results of Experiment 2 showed that now tact function and listener by function training was sufficient to establish the emergence of both intraverbal responses in the absence of Interspersal Treatment. These results are discussed in relation to the growing literature suggesting that establishing bi-direction speaker and listener relations facilitates the emergence of untrained skills.