Many Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI) curricula recommend teaching receptive responding before targeting expressive responding (Leaf & McEachin, 1999; Lovaas, 2003). However, a small literature base suggests that teaching expressive responses first may be more efficient when teaching children with ASD and other developmental…

We review recommendations for sequencing instruction in receptive and expressive language objectives in early and intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) programs. Several books recommend completing receptive protocols before introducing corresponding expressive protocols. However, this recommendation has little empirical support, and some…

Four nine year olds with mild mental retardation received training on the meaning of idiomatic phrases. All children demonstrated learning and an ability to understand the learned idioms when presented in unfamiliar contexts. Children were able to generalize their receptive learning to an expressive task with varying levels of success. (Author/JDD)

Parents of three autistic boys (ages 7-8) were taught to use a time delay procedure to increase their children's appropriate spontaneous speech in naturally occurring daily settings. Results indicated that all children increased their daily spontaneous speech and generalized their speech to other locations and persons. (Author/JDD)