Skinner (1957) differentiated the roles of the speaker and the listener in a verbal encounter. Although not extensively emphasized, Skinner suggested an individual often behaves verbally even when responding as a listener. Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often display the absence of important, and basic verbal repertoires…

Lag reinforcement schedules have been shown in previous research to be an effective intervention for teaching verbal and nonverbal response variability to individuals with developmental disabilities. In more recent research, variability itself has been considered a reinforceable behavior in its own right (Susa & Schlinger, The Analysis of…

B. F. Skinner's (1957) "Verbal Behavior" had a limited influence on empirical research in the first few decades following its publication, but an increase in empirical activity has been evident in recent years. The purpose of this article is to update previous analyses that have quantified the influence of "Verbal Behavior" on…

We evaluated the use of behavioral skills training (BST) to train caregivers to conduct procedures commonly associated with mand training. We trained two caregivers on the following procedures: (a) conducting preference assessments, (b) delivering preferred items contingent on appropriate behavior, (c) capturing and contriving motivating…

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…

This study compared the total amount of training time and total number of trial blocks for individuals with severe developmental disabilities to acquire mands under control of unconditioned establishing operations and mands under control of transitive conditioned establishing operations for manual sign and for the Picture Exchange Communication…

This study is a replication of Sundberg and Sundberg (1990) that compared topography-based verbal behavior with selection-based verbal behavior in terms of acquisition, accuracy, and testing for the emergence of a new verbal relation. Participants were three typical children and three developmentally disabled persons with autism. The study sought…

The purpose of this project was to demonstrate untrained vocal requests in three adults with severe developmental disabilities. Specifically, we evaluated whether a history of reinforced relational responding would give rise to untrained vocal requests for novel items. Participants were first taught to request preferred items using their category…

Palilalia, the delayed repetition of words or phrases, occurs frequently among individuals with autism and developmental disabilities. The current study used a combined multiple baseline and reversal design to investigate the effectiveness of presenting tacts as corrections for palilalia. During baseline, five preschoolers with autism emitted high…