Facilitating the emergence of intraverbal tacts by autistic children via joint control.

Rodriguez et al. (2022) discovered that teaching four component skills was sufficient to facilitate the emergence of intraverbal tacts across four applications with three participants. Our study replicated and evaluated an extension of this procedure that was directed at facilitating intraverbal tacts when a child learns the component skills but continues to fail to produce intraverbal tacts. The extension consisted of procedures to enhance the divergent control exerted by the auditory stimulus (i.e., the question) and the discriminability of joint control. Intraverbal tacts emerged for all three participants after undergoing the extension procedures. These results are discussed in the context of a conceptual analysis of intraverbal tacts and the potential role of joint control.

Facilitating the emergence of intraverbal tacts in children with autism spectrum disorder: A preliminary analysis.

Intraverbal tacts are an example of multiply controlled verbal behavior. More specifically, they are verbal responses under control of both a nonverbal (visual) stimulus (e.g., a green ball) and a verbal (auditory) stimulus (e.g., "What color?" vs. "What shape?"). Studies have shown that verbal behavior training can be arranged in a way that would lead to the emergence of other verbal operants, including multiply controlled (convergent) intraverbals. Our study sought to evaluate the relevance of a specific set of component skills on the emergence of intraverbal tacts in children with an autism spectrum disorder. Intraverbal tacts were observed only when all component skills were mastered, suggesting that this set of skills was sufficient to produce emergent verbal performance. Preliminary data were obtained on the necessity of 4 of the 6 component skills and tentatively suggest that they may be necessary to produce emergent intraverbal tacts, at least under some conditions.

Promoting the emergence of tacting three-digit numerals through a chain prompt combined with matrix training.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulty generalizing from directly trained responses to untrained responses (i.e., emergent responding). In this study, we used a chain prompt combined with matrix training to teach 2 participants with ASD to tact 192 three-digit numerals. We used a multiple-baseline design across matrices to evaluate the treatment effects on trained and untrained tacts of numerals. Both participants mastered all numerals exposed to training and all numerals not exposed to training after 3 to 5 sixteen-trial sessions per matrix. One participant learned to tact 8 numerals for each 1 numeral exposed to direct training, and the other participant learned to tact 12 numerals for each 1 numeral exposed to direct training. We discuss these results relative to the effectiveness and efficiency of our chain prompt combined with matrix training for teaching tacting skills for targets with shared stimulus properties that facilitate generalization to untrained targets.

Developing and Implementing Emergent Responding Training Systems With Available and Low-Cost Computer-Based Learning Tools: Some Best Practices and a Tutorial.

Systems and protocols based on emergent responding training have been demonstrated to be effective instructional tools for teaching a variety of skills to typically developing adult learners across a number of content areas in controlled research settings. However, these systems have yet to be widely adopted by instructors and are not often used in applied settings such as college classrooms or staff trainings. Proponents of emergent responding training systems have asserted that this failure might be because the protocols require substantial resources to develop, and there are no known manuals or guidelines to assist teachers or trainers with the development of the training systems. In order to assist instructors with the implementation of systems, we provide a brief summary of emergent responding training systems research; review the published computer-based training systems studies; present general guidelines for developing and implementing a training and testing system; and provide a detailed, task-analyzed written and visually supported manual/tutorial for educators and trainers using free and easily accessible computer-based learning tools and web applications. Educators and trainers can incorporate these methods and learning tools into their current curriculum and instructional designs to improve overall learning outcomes and training efficiency.

Emergent completion of multistep instructions via joint control.

Teaching procedures that facilitate the emergence of novel responses allow for increased efficiency, which is critical when providing early-intervention services to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Three 5- and 6-year-old children diagnosed with ASD participated. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated functional control over the effects of teaching echoic rehearsals on the emergence of completing novel two-step instructions via joint control and obtained generalization and maintenance of the effects in an applied, nontraining context. In Experiment 2, we conducted an experimental analysis of joint control by disrupting rehearsal of the instruction and tacts of the objects in the instruction, which served as the sources of joint control. Our results support the efficacy of the procedures for establishing first-trial performance with novel instructions and indicate that joint control is responsible for the emergent performance produced by our teaching procedures.

Establishing initial auditory-visual conditional discriminations and emergence of initial tacts in young children with autism spectrum disorder.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often display impaired listener skills, and few studies have evaluated procedures for establishing initial auditory-visual conditional discrimination skills. We developed and evaluated a treatment package for training initial auditory-visual conditional discriminations based on the extant research on training such discriminations in children with ASD with at least some preexisting skills in this area. The treatment package included (a) conditional-only training, (b) prompting the participant to echo the sample stimulus as a differential observing response, (c) prompting correct selection responses using an identity-match prompt, (d) using progressively delayed prompts, and (e) repeating trials until the participant emitted an independent correct response. Results indicated all participants mastered all listener targets, and the two participants for whom we tested the emergence of corresponding tacts showed mastery of most tacts without direct training. We discuss these results relative to prior research on listener skills and tacts.

An Abbreviated Evaluation of the Efficiency of Listener and Tact Instruction for Children with Autism.

We assessed the efficiency of tact and listener training for eight participants with autism spectrum disorder. Tact and listener probes were conducted in baseline for all target sets, and then tact training was initiated with one and listener training with another. Following mastery of one set, tact and listener probes were conducted with only the sets assigned to the same modality of training (i.e., sets 1, 3, and 5 for tact; sets 2, 4, and 6 for listener). Training and probes were repeated for all sets. The measures of efficiency included the number of skills mastered through direct training, the number of skills that emerged without training, the number of trials-to-criterion, and maintenance of skills. Clinical programming based on each participant's results is discussed. For six participants, tact training was more efficient than listener training across multiple measures. For the remaining two participants, tact training and listener training were considered equivalent.