Intraverbal Assessment for Persons with Aphasia or Other Acquired Brain Injury.

An intraverbal assessment was administered to older adults with aphasia, using a hierarchy of questions that required increasingly complex verbal discriminative stimulus control. Five categories of errors were defined and analyzed for putative stimulus control, with the aim to identify requisite assessment components leading to more efficient and effective treatments. Evocative control over intraverbal error responses was evident throughout the database, as shown by commonalities within four distinct categories of errors; a fifth category, representing a narrow majority of errors, was less clear in terms of functional control over responses. Generally, questions requiring increasingly complex intraverbal stimulus control resulted in weaker verbal performance for those with aphasia. A new 9-point intraverbal assessment model is proposed, based on Skinner's functional analysis of verbal behavior. The study underscores that loss or disruption of a formerly sophisticated language repertoire presents differently than the fledgling language skills and errors of new learners, such as typically developing children and those with autism or developmental disabilities. Thus, we would do well to consider that rehabilitation may require a different approach to intervention than habilitation. We offer several thematic topics for future research in this area.

An annotated bibliography of articles in the Journal of Speech and Language Pathology-Applied Behavior Analysis.

The open-source Journal of Speech and Language Pathology-Applied Behavior Analysis (JSLP-ABA) was published online from 2006 to 2010. We present an annotated bibliography of 80 articles published in the now-defunct journal with the aim of representing its scholarly content to readers of The Analysis of Verbal Behavior. We hope this effort will stimulate discussion, research, and treatment applications with respect to disorders of speech, language, hearing, swallowing, and voice and that collaborative efforts may be fostered between the two professions represented by JSLP-ABA: speech-language pathology and applied behavior analysis.

Jack Michael's Musings on the 60th Anniversary of Skinner's Verbal Behavior.

When the B. F. Skinner Foundation reprinted Skinner's Verbal Behavior in 1992, Jack Michael wrote one of its two forewords, a detailed outline of the book's purpose and scope. On the 60th anniversary of the first publication (1957) of Verbal Behavior, Jack reflects on the book's impact and its importance to the understanding of language from a behavioral perspective.

A Bibliographic Tribute to Jack Michael.

"In the late 1950's, Jack Michael, a bright but irritating young psychology instructor, moved from the Universities of Kansas to Houston to Arizona State. Along the way he befriended two nontraditional students, protected them through their Ph.D. programs, and turned them loose on the world: Teodoro Ayllon…and Montrose Wolf…" (Risley, 2001, p. 267). So begins Risley's chapter on the origins of applied behavior analysis. For almost 50 years, Jack Michael provided a model for us to "talk like Skinner" and to analyze behavior as Skinner would. For this, he has been widely respected and revered. The purpose of this bibliography is to explain to new and familiar readers alike Jack's contributions to the field of behavior analysis in areas of his primary focus: (a) behavioral function taxonomy, (b) motivation, (c) reinforcement, (d) response topographies, (e) multiple control, (f) duplic and codic verbal behavior, and (g) teaching. Throughout, we weave his role in the field's history and his leadership in its expansion, as these have been additional areas of significant contributions. Above all, we wish to highlight Jack's work, in bibliographic and narrative form, in a way that expresses a heartfelt tribute on behalf of his students and others whom he influenced to learn about psychology as a natural science and to think and talk like Skinner.

Effects of operant discrimination training on the vocalizations of nonverbal children with autism.

We evaluated the effects of operant discrimination training (ODT) on the vocalizations of 3 boys with autism. We compared ODT to a stimulus-stimulus pairing (SSP) condition and a control condition in an adapted alternating-treatments design. ODT increased the target vocalizations of all participants compared to the control condition, and its effects were similar to SSP. All participants preferred ODT to SSP.

Echoic and self-echoic responses in children.

Eleven typically developing children were assessed on the accuracy of prompted self-echoic responses following a 5-s delay from their initial echoic response, replicating procedures in Esch, Esch, McCart, and Petursdottir (2010) that compared discrepancies between echoic and self-echoic scores of autistic and typically developing children following a 2-s delay. We compared the two studies in terms of age, level tested, and echoic/self-echoic discrepancy scores. Age and test level differences were found to be statistically significant. Results are discussed in terms of discrepant self-echoic performance and self-echoic rehearsal as it relates to participant age, test level, motivating variables, and the development of complex behavior.

Analyzing stimulus-stimulus pairing effects on preferences for speech sounds.

Several studies have demonstrated effects of stimulus-stimulus pairing (SSP) on children's vocalizations, but numerous treatment failures have also been reported. The present study attempted to isolate procedural variables related to failures of SSP to condition speech sounds as reinforcers. Three boys diagnosed with autism-spectrum disorders participated. Phase 1 was designed to assess SSP effects on production of auditory stimuli via button pressing. When SSP failed to produce a preference for the target stimulus, we instituted a series of procedural manipulations intended to address potential reasons for failure. One participant preferred the target stimulus when given the opportunity to select preferred items for pairing prior to each session, but a subsequent reversal attempt produced ambiguous results. Two participants showed no consistent preference in Phase 1 and underwent a within-session reinforcer evaluation in Phase 2, in which alternative controlling variables were demonstrated by delivering preferred stimuli contingent on button pressing.

An assessment of self-echoic behavior in young children.

In the behavioral literature, self-echoic behavior has been hypothesized to play an important role in, for example, emergent conditional discriminations (e.g., Lowenkron, 1991), emergent verbal operants (Horne & Lowe, 1996), and problem solving (Skinner, 1957). Although early behavioral intervention programs for children with autism emphasize the establishment of accurate echoic repertoires, the type of stimulus control that defines a self-echoic response is typically not addressed. We report the development of a self-echoic assessment procedure that was administered to children with and without autism spectrum disorders. Preliminary results indicated that a discrepancy between echoic and self-echoic repertoires was more likely to be present among participants with autism than among typically developing participants. Future research should evaluate the extent to which interventions to establish self-echoic responding might produce other collateral benefits.

Evaluation of an enhanced stimulus-stimulus pairing procedure to increase early vocalizations of children with autism.

Evidence to support stimulus-stimulus pairing (SSP) in speech acquisition is less than robust, calling into question the ability of SSP to reliably establish automatically reinforcing properties of speech and limiting the procedure's clinical utility for increasing vocalizations. We evaluated the effects of a modified SSP procedure on low-frequency within-session vocalizations that were further strengthened through programmed reinforcement. Procedural modifications (e.g., interspersed paired and unpaired trials) were designed to increase stimulus salience during SSP. All 3 participants, preschoolers with autism, showed differential increases of target over nontarget vocal responses during SSP. Results suggested an automatic reinforcement effect of SSP, although alternative interpretations are discussed, and suggestions are made for future research to determine the utility of SSP as a clinical intervention for speech-delayed children.

Increasing vocal variability in children with autism using a lag schedule of reinforcement.

Variability has been demonstrated to be an operant dimension of behavior (Neuringer, 2002; Page & Neuringer, 1985). Recently, lag schedules have been used to demonstrate operant variability of verbal behavior in persons with a diagnosis of autism (e.g., Lee, McComas, & Jawor, 2002). The current study evaluated the effects of a Lag 1 schedule on the vocal variability of 2 nonverbal children with a diagnosis of autism. Results showed systematic increases in variability during the Lag 1 schedule. Implications of lag schedules for speech and language training are discussed.

Evaluating stimulus-stimulus pairing and direct reinforcement in the establishment of an echoic repertoire of children diagnosed with autism.

Many children with autism do not imitate adult vocalizations, an important skill in learning to talk. Pairing adult vocalizations with preferred stimuli has been shown to increase free-operant vocalizations but effects are temporary; thus, direct reinforcement may be necessary to establish durable vocal behaviors. In Experiment 1, directly reinforced echoic responses did not increase following stimulus-stimulus pairings in three children with autism. Similarly, pairings did not increase free-operant vocalizations in Experiment 2, a replication of Miguel et al. (2002). Experiment 3 demonstrated that shaping increased vowel frequency for one participant. Results suggest that variables are yet to be delineated that influence effectiveness of a stimulus-stimulus pairing procedure on vocalization frequency and acquisition of a verbal operant following such pairings.

Secretin as a treatment for autism: a review of the evidence.

Secretin is used in the United States for diagnosis of pancreatic gastrointestinal (GI) dysfunction and disease. Repeated therapeutic use has not been approved. Widespread interest in secretin as a treatment for autism followed media reports of behavioral improvements in an autistic child who received the hormone during a GI diagnostic procedure. International demand for secretin soared in the absence of experimental evidence of its efficacy for autism. This review presents a brief history of secretin's rise to popularity and summarizes research on secretin as a treatment for autism. Seventeen studies are reviewed comparing the effects of secretin forms, dosage levels, and dosing intervals on outcome measures with approximately 600 children. Twelve of 13 placebo-controlled studies failed to demonstrate the differential efficacy of secretin. Implications for advocating treatment in the absence of empirical evidence are discussed.