Exploring the Effects of Daily, Timed, and Typed Technical Term Definition Practice on Indicators of Fluency.

Say All Fast Minute Every Day Shuffled (SAFMEDS) is one behaviorally based teaching tactic. Like flash cards, SAFMEDS helps build familiarity with course objectives and can be used to promote fluency in the corresponding verbal repertoire. However, SAFMEDS differs from flash cards in that it follows specific design features and the acronym specifies how to practice flash cards. Students might practice in the traditional see-say learning channel used with SAFMEDS, or they could practice in a see-type learning channel (i.e., Type All Fast Minute Every Day Shuffled [TAFMEDS]), as the precision teaching community has sought to bring digital technology to their teaching, using computerized standard celeration charts and programs that present flash cards in a digital format. The present study explored the use of computerized charting and a see-type learning channel program developed for TAFMEDS in several sections of an undergraduate Introduction to Behavior Principles course. Course instructors explored the correlations between daily TAFMEDS practice with behavior-analytic terminology and student performance. After 3 weeks of daily practice, the study concluded with a culmination of 4 checkouts that examined endurance, application, stability, retention (when possible), and performance in different learning channels. Results indicated a correlation between daily practice and higher daily performance frequencies and longer term outcomes, including maintenance, endurance, stability, application, and generativity. The findings are discussed in terms of bringing frequency-building activities to university settings and the advantages and disadvantages of bringing technological advancements into frequency-based instruction.

Learning Channels: The Role of Compound Stimuli in the Emergence of Intraverbal Relations in Children on the Autism Spectrum.

Teaching tact and intraverbal responses based on function-feature-class to children with language delays can result in the emergence of untrained relational responses. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of compound stimuli in discriminated operants (i.e., different combinations of hear, see, touch, and taste) on the acquisition of object-attribute relations, on the emergence of untrained attribute-object relations, and on the acquisition and emergence of same-different relations between objects and their attributes. All the participants were on the autism spectrum and between 4 and 12 years old. Participants who did not meet the mastery criterion or show emergent intraverbal responses during initial training trials completed a fluency-based practice phase. Overall results showed that all six participants required fewer trials to meet the criterion in the condition involving compound stimuli (e.g., HearSeeSay plus Touch, Taste, or Sniff) as compared to the HearSeeSay-alone condition. In addition, participants required fewer fluency practice timings in the condition involving compound stimuli to meet fluency aim.

The Importance of Professional Discourse for the Continual Advancement of Practice Standards: The RBT® as a Case in Point.

The Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB®) created a third level of certification, the Registered Behavior Technician™ (RBT®) in 2014. The RBT® was created based upon the requests of stakeholders who wanted to credential those individuals who make direct contact with clients under the supervision of a Board Certified Behavior Analyst®. There has been tremendous growth in the number of RBTs® with over 60,000 individuals certified to date. The BACB® recently sent out a newsletter outlining changes to the RBT® certification, including the processes of training, supervising, and becoming an RBT®. These changes represent a number of potential concerns. The purpose of this paper is to highlight these concerns and to propose solutions to improve the RBT® certification.

The effects of tact training on stereotypic vocalizations in children with autism.

This study was a systematic extension of Karmali, Greer, Nuzzulo-Gomez, Ross, and Rivera-Valdes (2005) and Ahearn, Clark, MacDonald, and Chung (2007). We investigated the effects of a tact correction procedure on stereotypic vocalizations in 4 children diagnosed with autism who ranged in age from 6 to 16 years. Participants had limited vocal verbal repertoires and were primarily dependent on prompts for the emission of appropriate vocalizations. A multiple-baseline design across participants was used. Data were collected on instances of stereotypic vocalizations and independent tacts during baseline conditions and on instances of stereotypic vocalizations, independent tacts, and echoic-tacts during intervention. Procedural integrity and social validity data were also obtained. The results indicated a decrease in stereotypic vocalizations for 3 of the 4 participants and a slight increase in appropriate vocal verbal behavior (i.e., tacting) for all participants. The study provides support for the use of tact correction procedures to decrease stereotypic vocalizations and increase appropriate vocalizations in children with autism.

The effects of textual prompting and reading fluency on the acquisition of intraverbals.

The study examined the effects of textual prompt fading on the acquisition of intraverbals in 3 individuals with developmental disabilities. An alternating treatments design was used to assess the two independent variables. The first independent variable was transfer of stimulus control without component skill fluency. The second independent variable was transfer of stimulus control with component skill fluency, in which participants were taught the textual responses used in the scripts to a level of fluency prior to transfer of stimulus control. The results suggest that transfer of stimulus control was effective for teaching intraverbals and that adding a fluency component resulted in faster acquisition for some participants.

Dialogue on private events.

In the fall of 2003, the authors corresponded on the topic of private events on the listserv of the Verbal Behavior Special Interest Group. Extracts from that correspondence raised questions about the role of response amplitude in determining units of analysis, whether private events can be investigated directly, and whether covert behavior differs from other behavior except in amplitude. Most participants took a cautious stance, noting not only conceptual pitfalls and empirical difficulties in the study of private events, but doubting the value of interpretive exercises about them. Others argued that despite such obstacles, in domains where experimental analyses cannot be done, interpretation of private events in the light of laboratory principles is the best that science can offer. One participant suggested that the notion that private events can be behavioral in nature be abandoned entirely; as an alternative, the phenomena should be reinterpreted only as physiological events.