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.

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2008. / "May 2008." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 35-39). Library also has microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mich. : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [2009]. 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm. Online version available on the World Wide Web.