Association for Behavior Analysis International

Children with cochlear implants (CIs) who are readers usually produce more accurate speech when textual behavior than tacts. Equivalence based instruction (EBI) and matrix training can promote auditory comprehension, speech accuracy in tacts and verbal productivity, from a minimum set of sentences taught. The present study evaluated the effects of an EBI module on equivalence relations (between pictures, and dictated and printed sentences), accuracy in tacts, and recombinative performances, in six children with CI, readers and who had inaccurate tacts. Three sets of sentences were phonetically-balanced, arranged into subject-verb-object matrices and planned in progressive difficulty (regular and irregular words, and pseudo-sentences); nine sentences in the diagonal were taught, and 25 were evaluated in recombinative probes. The teaching module was organized into three steps and multiple probes evaluated all relations in EBI-network. In each step, were directly taught matching pictures to dictated sentences (AB) by MTS and by exclusion teaching; and construction of sentences under dictation (AE) by CRMTS. According to multiple baseline between sets, all participants learned the taught relations (AB-AE), increased the accurate tacts (BD), and produced both equivalence and syntactic (intra-intersets) relations. The results subsidies a broader curriculum of sentences for the rehabilitation of children with CI.

We evaluated procedures for teaching one student with ASD a component of perspective-taking: identifying their own knowledge based on sensory information, using prompting, fading and reinforcement. During the intervention we taught him to tact the verbal or non-verbal stimuli that evoked his response and to discriminate between known or unknown information based on the verbal statement provided by the experimenter. Specifically, after presenting a verbal statement with or without salient stimuli to the student, we taught an autoclitic frame (e.g. “because I see/hear/touch” or “because I don’t see/hear/touch”) in response to the question “why do/don’t you know?” We evaluated the clinical efficacy of the teaching procedures using a multiple baseline across test conditions design. After no response in baseline for the three test conditions, we used a different set of stimuli during the teaching phase. After reaching mastery criteria we presented again, as post training, the same set of stimuli used in baseline. The student reached mastery criteria for the untaught sets in each test condition. We discuss how this skill may be related to more advanced perspective taking skills, based on Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of requiring echoic responses during an auditory visual discrimination training on the emergence of tacts in a five years-old boy diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), using an adapted alternating treatment design with pretest and posttest probes. In the auditory-visual discrimination training, the first set with three stimuli (set A), echoic responses were not required during the auditory visual discrimination training, while for the second three stimuli set (set B), echoic responses were required during the auditory visual discrimination training. After meeting mastery criteria on the auditory-visual discrimination training, tact responses were assessed for the six stimuli. The results showed full emergence of tacts in both conditions, although the participant needed less training sessions to master criteria on the condition in which echoic responses were required. The procedure is currently being applied to another children in order to verify generality.

During study 1 we taught an adolescent with ASD to pass a “false belief” task using multiple-exemplar training (MET) and prompting and fading. During baseline we presented three different role playing scenarios (RPS) adherent to the “Sally and Ann” test but using preferred characters; the student failed to provide the correct perspective-taking (PT) response. During the training phase we presented novel RPS interspersing oral scenarios (OS), teaching the student to tact the controlling variables of his own behavior and the behavior of the character before providing the PT response. During post training the student correctly provided PT responses for the same scenarios presented in baseline, for three novel OS and for a novel “false belief” task (unexpected contents). During study 2 we probed a problem solving response that implied an applied PT response in the natural environment in a social situation. Consistently with previous researches the student failed to generalize the PT response in an applied setting. Then we taught, using MET and prompting and fading, the problem solving response in the natural environment chaining the PT response to the problem solving response. During post-training the student provided the problem solving response without engaging overtly in the PT response.