The purpose of this study was to conduct parametric analyses of verbal behavior developmental protocols used to induce verbal behavioral cusps and capabilities. A parametric analysis detects the relationship between different values of an independent variable and its effects on behavior. Researchers manipulate parameters of an independent variable such as its quantity, rate, latency, intensity, or duration. In this study, the goal of the analysis was to determine how different parameters of developmental protocols affect the time required to induce verbal developmental cusps and how these parameters vary as a function of the differences in the cusps and capabilities present prior to initiating a protocol. In Experiment I, I conducted a parametric analysis of the intensity of an Intensive Tact Instruction (ITI) protocol on the induction of Bidirectional Naming (BiN). I selected eight participants due to absence of BiN in their repertoire while still demonstrating listener literacy and echoic, mand, and tact repertoires. I matched the participants into dyads based on their similarity in BiN level and rate of learning to assess the effects of the full (100 learn unit) intensity and the accelerated (50 learn unit) intensity of the ITI protocol. Results found varied results dependent on the students’ level of cusps/capabilities and degree of BiN at the onset of the intervention. Students with Unidirectional Naming (UniN) and higher capabilities at the onset of the protocol demonstrated that the intensities produced similar effects on inducing BiN; however, the accelerated protocol produced this outcome in fewer learning opportunities, suggesting the efficiency of the accelerated protocol. Students who demonstrated No-incidental Naming (NiN, or independence of listener and speaker repertoires) at the onset of the study demonstrated mixed results from the intervention, regardless of intervention intensity. While UniN could be established with these students with both the full and accelerated intensity of ITI, results on demonstrating BiN in these students varied. The outcomes are discussed in terms of efficiency and cost effectiveness, as well as the significance of conducting parametric analyses on protocols. In Experiment II, I conducted a parametric analysis of the stringency of an Auditory Match-to-Sample (AM) protocol on the induction of accurate echoics. I again matched participants into dyads based on their rate of learning and their similarity in echoic responses, to test the effects of the full (90% accuracy across 20 trials) criterion and the accelerated (5 consecutive correct responses) criterion of the AM protocol. Participants demonstrated increases in their full echoic emissions following the AM intervention, regardless of the stringency of the criterion delivered (i.e., full vs. accelerated). Results across both Experiment I and II demonstrated the positive effects of conducting parametric analyses on protocols used to induce verbal behavioral cusps, to develop more efficient methods. Despite the manipulation to more accelerated parameters of the protocol intervention, comparable behavior change occurred across verbal behavior developmental cusps for both experiments.

I conducted a descriptive study consisting of 30 preschool participants with and without disabilities to examine the relation between the 3 bidirectional operants. The bidirectional operants were speaker-as-own-listener cusps, which included bidirectional verbal operants between people, bidirectional self-talk conversational units, and Bidirectional Naming (BiN). Using previously recorded videos of 10-min of social play (between-people condition) and 10-min of isolated fantasy play (self-talk condition), I recorded each instance of verbal behavior as a vocal initiation (VI), a non-vocal initiation (NI), a vocal response (VR), and a non-vocal response (NR). These initial recordings were further analyzed into the number of unidirectional and bidirectional verbal operants between people, unidirectional and bidirectional self-talk, single topography verbal behaviors, multiple topography verbal behaviors, missed opportunities, initiations, responses, and numbers of verbal episodes. The data collection procedure consisted of identifying each instance of verbal behavior during the between-people and self-talk fantasy play conditions and identifying the rotation in the participant’s role as a speaker and a listener within the verbal episodes to measure the social reinforcement function. For BiN, I measured the number of untaught listener responses (10 selection responses) and the number of untaught speaker responses (10 tact and 10 intraverbal responses) with familiar and unfamiliar novel stimuli following a naming experience in which the participants received 20 opportunities to hear the names of 5 novel stimuli while observing the pictures of the stimuli. Data were statistically analyzed using parametric and nonparametric analyses with Bonferroni corrected p-value. The results of the study were as follow: (1) the participants’ demographic characteristics were independent of their demonstrations of the three bidirectional operants, (2) BiN with unfamiliar stimuli was related to the participants’ emission of the bidirectional verbal operants between people, (3) the components of BiN and the bidirectional self-talk conversational units were independent but the results are inconclusive, (4) the unidirectional verbal operants between people were related to the bidirectional self-talk conversational units, and (5) the participants’ additional communicative verbal behaviors (i.e., vocal and non-vocal verbal behaviors, single and multiple topographies verbal behaviors, initiations, and responses) were independent of their degrees of BiN. The analyses of data suggested that there may be an underlying social reinforcement that is shared amongst the three bidirectional operants. Some may be more observable, such as the shared social reinforcement function between the bidirectional verbal operants between people and BiN with unfamiliar stimuli; whereas some may be less observable, as it may be manifested in a form of an audience control rather than social reinforcement function. Thus, the current study adds to the existing literature on verbal development as it shows the relation between the three bidirectional operants and the importance of social reinforcement not only to engage in conversation with others but to learn names of new unfamiliar objects or to come under audience control.

I conducted 2 studies to investigate the relationship between vocal verbal behavior, specifically, articulation and the production of echoics, and the presence of bidirectional Naming (BiN). In Study 1, I performed a correlational analysis using data collected on (1) responses to bidirectional Naming probes, (2) standard score son an articulation assessment, and (3) scaled scores on a sentence repetition assessment which functioned to measure echoic behavior at the sentence level for 46 early elementary students. The number of correct responses to unfamiliar stimuli using unfamiliar spoken and visual stimuli were measured for bidirectional Naming probes. Student performance on the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation 3 served to measure the participants’ articulation of consonant and consonant cluster sounds in the English language. The Recalling Sentences subtest on the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals® – Fifth Edition was used to measure the accuracy of participants’ echoic behavior when repeating spoken sentences. Results using a Pearson’s correlation showed that there was no significant correlation between bidirectional Naming and participants’ articulation scores using the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation 3, r = .037, p = .808. However, there was a significant and overall positive correlation between bidirectional Naming and participant scores from the Recalling Sentences subtest, r = .589, p < .001. Following the results of the correlations from Study I, I tested the effects of 2 echoic training interventions on the acquisition of bidirectional Naming in 8 early elementary students that were grouped into matched pairs to form 4 dyads in Experiment I. In each dyad, 1 participant underwent a "verbal echoic” intervention consisting of echoing sentences comprised of grammatically coherent English that had verbal function. The matched participant in the same dyad went through an “acoustic echoic” intervention that used the same words contained in the sentence echoed by the participant in the verbal echoic intervention but scrambled so that the sentence were syntactically and semantically incoherent and thus, lacked verbal function. Results showed that 5 out of the 8 participants have acquired bidirectional Naming following either echoic condition. More specifically, 4 participants acquired bidirectional Naming after the verbal echoic condition. One other participant acquired bidirectional Naming following the acoustic echoic condition. The implications of the differences in the effectiveness of the two intervention conditions are discussed with regard to the significance of acquiring bidirectional Naming.

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2004. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains xii, 114 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 59-66).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1983.

Abstract Verbal behavior encompasses a wide range of aspects in our everyday lives and in the activities of a society. Many verbal behavior interventions often include programs to teach answering questions, these responses are referred to as intraverbals. Previous research has demonstrated a higher rate of acquisition of verbal targets such as mands and tacts for children with a limited verbal repertoire when a presentation of both sign and vocal prompts occur simultaneously (Total Communication), in comparison to sign-alone or vocal-alone trainings. However, an important variable not often examined in the literature is the comparison of Total Communication (TC) and Prompt Delay (PD) to further evaluate which leads to higher rates of acquisition. The current study extends previous research by evaluating the relative effectiveness of TC and PD in teaching intraverbal skills to three children who have been diagnosed with autism. During the TC condition the participants were required to emit a vocal and sign response simultaneously during training. During the PD condition, participants were required to emit only a vocal response during training. The results suggest that there was no clinically relevant difference between the two conditions in the acquisition of intraverbals for these participants.

Teaching using matrix programming has been shown to result in recombinative generalization. However, this procedure has not been compared to more standard discrete trial training formats such as DTT. This study compared acquisition and recombinative generalization of two-component tacts using each procedure. Matrix training was found to be more efficient than the DTT format. Half the amount of teaching was required to teach roughly the same number of targets using matrix training as compared to DTT.

Research on the functional independence of tacts and mands is mixed. The conditions under which tact training transfers to mands are unclear. The current study evaluated whether multiple exemplars of tact training followed by mand training would result in the independent transfer from tacts to mands. It was shown that all three participants started manding for the item independently during tact training after one sequence of tact training followed by mand training.

Bilingual children represent a large population of preschool and school-aged children in the United States. Challenges may arise when the verbal community in which a child spends most of his or her time does not reinforce his or her primary language. Previous research has shown that children adjust their language to match the language of their listener (Genesee, Boivin, & Nicoladis, 1996). It is possible that having a native-language communication partner at school would improve child engagement, as measured by child mean length of utterance and quantity of child initiations. The purpose of this study is to examine whether listener language has an effect on number of child initiations and mean length of utterance. A secondary purpose is to replicate and extend previous research on children matching their language to that of their listener in Spanish-speaking preschoolers. Four preschoolers who were exposed to Spanish at home and English in their instructional setting were recruited. Their language proficiency was assessed with the preLAS and they were exposed to Spanish-speaking communication partners and English-speaking communication partners in a multielement design. Results suggest that the language of the listener had implications for amount of child initiations and mean length of utterance. This was not always predicted by the language proficiency assessment. Also, children were more likely to use their dominant language in the non-dominant language context than use the non-dominant language in the dominant language context. These results may have implications for best practices in educational settings for Spanish-speaking preschoolers.

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