The role of increased exposure to transfer-of-stimulus-control procedures on the acquisition of intraverbal behavior

Abstract

Studies that have compared the effectiveness of differing prompt types to teach intraverbal responses have yielded mixed results, suggesting that individuals' reinforcement histories with prompt types may influence which prompt will be most effective. The purpose of this study was to test whether programmed increases in exposure to specific prompt types would produce concomitant increases in the acquisition rate of intraverbal responding. We compared acquisition rates among 4 typically developing preschool-aged children when taught via either echoic or tact prompts following exposure training with 1 prompt type. For all participants, the prompt method most recently used to teach intraverbal responses required fewer trials to teach new intraverbal responses compared to a prompt method that had not been used recently. The results are discussed in terms of the effects of reinforcement history on the acquisition of verbal behavior.

Keywords: echoic; intraverbal behavior; prompting strategies; tact; verbal behavior.

Figure 1.

Percentage of independent correct responses across acquisition blocks for David, Kevin, Adam, and Chasin. Broken vertical line in Kevin's data indicates additional exposure training.