Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may have difficulty acquiring intraverbal behavior. The present study compared manipulations of stimulus salience (i.e., volume increase, elongation) to teach intraverbals (e.g., "You drink [juice]" and "You drink from [cup]") to three participants diagnosed with ASD whose…

A common practice in tact training is to include a supplemental verbal stimulus (e.g., "What is it?") in addition to the presentation of a nonverbal discriminative stimulus. Previous literature has suggested that this supplemental verbal stimulus can impede acquisition and generalization relative to the presentation of the object alone,…

This study investigated the effects of tact prompts on the acquisition and retention of divergent intraverbal responding to categorical questions involving conditional discriminations. A 6-year-old boy with autism participated in the study. A multiple probe design across behaviors was used. A tact-prompt procedure was implemented. The results…

Young children with autism may fail to mand using a range of frames (e.g., "I want," "May I have," "Please give me"). We examined the effects of simultaneous script training and script fading on acquisition and maintenance of varied mand frames with six preschool children with autism. For participants who did not…

We report 2 experiments that tested the effects of multiple exemplar instruction (MEI) across training sets on the emergence of productive autoclitic frames (suffixes) for 6 preschoolers with and without language-based disabilities. We implemented multiple exemplar tact instruction with subsets of stimuli whose "names" contained the suffix "-er"…

Fluency-based strategies such as Say All Fast a Minute Each Day Shuffled (SAFMEDS) effectively promote fluent responding (i.e., high rate and accuracy). It is possible, however, that the stimulus control developed through these activities inhibits stimulus generalization. We investigated this concern in a two-part study with college students.…

The present study evaluated the emergence of intraverbal responses following tact training with three adolescents diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders. Participants were taught to tact the name of a cartoon character (e.g., "What is the name of this monster?" ["Simon"]) and that character's preferred food (e.g., "What food does this monster…

Previous research suggests that language-training procedures for children with autism might be enhanced following an assessment of conditions that evoke emerging verbal behavior. The present investigation examined a methodology to teach recognizable mands based on environmental variables known to evoke participants' idiosyncratic communicative…

Matching-to-sample and sequence training procedures were used to develop responding to stimulus classes that were considered analogous to 3 aspects of verbal behavior: identifying synonyms and parts of speech,and using syntax. Matching-to-sample procedures were used to train 12 paired associates from among 24 stimuli. These pairs were analogous to…

Describing the state of the science of ABA, this comprehensive handbook provides detailed information about theory, research, and intervention. The contributors are leading ABA authorities who present current best practices in behavioral assessment and demonstrate evidence-based strategies for supporting positive behaviors and reducing problem…

The usefulness of intact (topic outline format) and embedded (positioned within text) headings as processing aids to facilitate recall was examined, using a 2,500-word passage from introductory science textbooks. Prior studies were subject to criticisms which this study attempted to correct, specifically: (1) use of non-optimal dependent measures;…

Two experiments evaluated the effects of mnemonic training upon 5- and 10-year-old children's learning and retention of patterns at varying intervals. Subjects were 172 middle class children evenly distributed across the two age groups. Experiment I investigated the effects of individual strategies (perceptual exploration, organization of…

Seventeen different versions of a film designed to teach the assembly of the breech block of the 40mm antiaircraft gun were tested on 2377 apprentice seamen in 1948. Each version was shown to at least 100 men, in groups of about 30, in an effort to evaluate the relative effects on learning of certain content and tempo characteristic s of specific…