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There currently exists limited published literature on methods for teaching complex verbal operants to individuals with autism. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the PEAK – E curriculum in teaching receptive metonymical tacts using stimulus equivalence training procedures to children with autism. The procedures described in the PEAK – E program 10P – Equivalence: Metonymical Tacts were replicated across three children diagnosed with autism using a multiple baseline experimental design. The results of the suggest that the procedures were effective in teaching receptive metonymical tacts, with all three participants achieving mastery criteria. The results support and extend on previous studies by providing an empirical demonstration of effective procedures to teach receptive metonymical tacts to children with autism. The current study adds to progress behavior analysis in the direction of a behavior analytic understanding of complex verbal behavior.

Individuals with disabilities often have a limited tact repertoire. This study compared the acquisition and generalization of tacts taught using different stimulus modes within discrete trial training (DTT) with children who have a limited tacting repertoire. The three stimulus modes that were compared were videos, pictures, and 3D objects. This research replicated Gómez’s (2015) methodology with a participant pool with lower tacting skills. In addition, this study assessed for generalization of the acquired tacts to a novel exemplar. In this study, tact training required fewer sessions when the picture and 3D object were used as stimulus modes. These results were then replicated across stimulus sets with Abraham and Alex. Finally, in this study greater generalization was observed for the tacts trained with a 3D object.

This study evaluated the speed of acquisition and level of generalization of tacts across three different stimulus modes: picture-flashcard, video clip, and 3D object. Three young children diagnosed with autism participated in this study. The acquisition of tacts was evaluated during Discrete Trial Training sessions (DTT). Two of the three participants learned the tacts more rapidly in the video clip condition in contrast with the picture condition. All three participants generalized the three tacts learned through a specific stimulus mode to the remaining stimulus modes. One week after the generalization test, all participants generalized to all novel 3D objects.

Les chirurgiens-dentistes résument à eux seuls les difficultés de concilier argent et santé.Une réputation peu propice aux sourires, des ancêtres arracheurs de dents et le mythe du praticien voleur rendent complexe la relation de soin.Pourtant la profession s’est largement modernisée pour s’échapper de son image. Les nouvelles techniques, la meilleure prise en charge physique et psychique du patient tentent de réconcilier le grand public avec l’art dentaire.Parallèlement les plateaux techniques s’alourdissent, le taux de charge augmente, les honoraires progressent et le reste à charge des patients s’élève toujours plus, rappelant que la santé à un prix, surtout lorsqu’il s’agit de santé bucco-dentaire.Il convient de s’interroger sur les paramètres influant sur ces honoraires et sur les raisons d’une telle polémique.Il faut premièrement repréciser la justification des actes à honoraire libre.A l’origine, il s’agit d’une possibilité de compensation financière pour des actes de soins dont les tarifs fixés par la convention sont très bas. Cependant cette possibilité de compensation s’amenuise. Le tact et la mesure, maître mot de la détermination des honoraires ne suffit plus.Si l’Etat n’encadre pas directement les honoraires, les organismes complémentaires prennent de plus en plus de place dans l’échiquier des soins et mettent en place des réseaux de soins.Parallèlement les patients modifient leur comportement, en renonçant, reportant ou en choisissant des structures de soins dont l’offre est moins coûteuse, en France ou à l’étranger, ce qui pose de nouvelles questions médicales et juridiques. / Dental surgeons are a good example of the difficulty that health professionals face when trying to reconcile healthcare and money making. Their reputation doesn’t put a smile on anyone’s face: The fact that their ancestors used to pull teeth out without anesthetics or the popular sayings that dentists are overpriced make the ‘patient to healthcare provider’ relationship complicated.Nevertheless, the profession widely modernized itself to modify this picture: new techniques, better physical and psychological care are leverages that should help change people’s mind. But in the meantime, more and more technical capacity is needed, expenditures rise as well as fees and ultimately patient’s co-pay, reminding us that healthcare comes with a cost, especially within dentistry.The question of the parameters that influence dentistry fees and the resulting controversial debate is therefore a major issue to discuss.Also, the reason of the existence of the non-fixed fee system has to be recalled, since originally it was set up to compensate for care acts with very low fixed fee. However, with time, this compensation is getting less efficient and the ‘tact and moderation’ motto that should rule fees determination is not working anymore.Because the state doesn’t apply a new legal frame on fees determination, private health insurance companies are taking more and more space in our healthcare system with, for instance, the creation of healthcare provider networks. On the patients’ side, a growing number of people change their behavior towards dentistry by canceling or postponing cares or by choosing cheaper healthcare providers in France or abroad, which raises new legal and medical questions.

Stimulus Pairing Observational Procedure (SPOP) is an incidental teaching type procedure that has shown success in teaching typically developing children to name, independent tacting in the absence of the verbal community following a history of listener and echoic responses. The purpose of the current study was to compare SPOP and matching to sample procedures to determine the rate of acquisition for correct tact and listener responding , the rate of off task be avior, and the rate of generalization to different settings, stimuli, and instructors. Results of the study indicate that correct responding occurred at higher rates during MTS procedures than SPOP. The average rate of off task behavior was higher during SPOP sessions than during pre test, MTS sessions, or generalization probes for each participant. The results of the generalization probe may indicate that SPOP produces correct responding that increases or maintains during generalization, while MTS procedures produced more variable results.

Skinner (1957) suggested that verbal responses learned as mands are not necessarily emitted in tact relations and vice versa. Previous empirical research has found that newly acquired mands and tacts can be functionally independent. The present study investigated 1) whether novel responses taught in mand relations would be emitted as tacts when opportunity for tacting was presented; 2) whether novel responses taught in tact relations would be emitted as mands when opportunity for manding was presented; and 3) whether the size of pre-experimental mand and tact repertoires affected the rate of acquisition and/or transfer. Two vocal-verbal children with autism were taught three novel responses as mands and three other responses as tacts. Mand topographies transferred to tact relations and tact topographies transferred to mand relations for both participants. Overall acquisition as well as transfer of mands and tacts was faster for the participant with an entering repertoire of approximately 175 mands and 175 tacts than for the participant with a repertoire of approximately 100 mands and 100 tacts.

Skinner (1957) suggested that different verbal operants are acquired independently of each other and establishing a verbal operant as a mand will not necessarily result in the appearance of a tact having the same response form and vice versa. Recent empirical research has found that newly acquired mands and tacts can be transferred to different relations without direct training. The present study investigated 1) how verbal responses taught as pure mands affect untrained tact relations; 2) how verbal responses taught as pure tacts affect untrained mand relations; 3) how the size of mand and tact repertoires relate to speed of acquisition of new mands and tacts; and 4) how size of entering repertoires affect the transfer of mand topographies to tacts and vice versa. Two vocal-verbal children with autism were taught three novel responses as mands and three other responses as tacts. Mand topographies transferred to tact relations and tact topographies transferred to mand relations for both participants. Overall acquisition as well as transfer of mands and tacts was faster for the participant with a higher entering repertoire.

In Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior, the tact and mand are suggested to be functionally independent verbal operants. Many studies evaluating the verbal operants have provided results consistent with Skinner's notion of functional independence. For example, previous studies have yielded results showing that responses taught as tacts failed to emerge as mands unless they were directly trained as such. However, in many of the studies evaluating the functional independence of the verbal operants it is unclear whether the mand conditions were designed to actually evaluate that response function. The current study replicated and extended the findings of Wallace, Iwata, and Hanley (2006), who empirically demonstrated conditions that facilitated the transfer from tact to mand relations. Students in the current study were taught to tact both high preference and low preference items and were subsequently assessed on their ability to mand for those items. Responses taught as tacts transferred to mand responses without direct training for the high preference items only. These results suggest that the conditions under which training of one operant facilitates the emergence of an untrained verbal operant may be related to motivating operations.

Verbal behavior is a critical repertoire for children with autism spectrum disorder to acquire. Tacts—verbal behavior evoked by nonverbal stimuli—are important for communicating about the world around oneself. Noun-verb tacts are part of a robust tact repertoire and may be addressed during applied behavior analytic intervention. When acquiring noun-verb tacts, it is important that the speaker learn to respond to many variations of stimuli like novel combinations of learned nouns and verbs, which is called recombinative generalization. One strategy to teach multi-component targets, such as the noun-verb tact, and lead to recombinative generalization is matrix training. Matrix training is a framework utilized to arrange targets that can be combined in order to facilitate recombinative generalization by teaching a subset of combinations and then probing others. With three children with ASD, we used matrix training and evaluated the acquisition of trained and novel combinations of noun-verb tacts with GIFs as stimuli arranged in three matrices. We used a concurrent multiple probe design across sets, and our results indicated that all participants acquired trained noun-verb tact targets in the presence of the GIFs. The degree of recombinative generalization varied across participants, but each participant demonstrated recombinative generalization with some stimuli. We analyzed responding during generalization probes to identify possible sources of stimulus control. We discussed the errors that were emitted when testing for recombinative generalization and provided suggestions for future research on matrix training and recombinative generalization.