The Effects of the Interspersal of Related Responses on the Emergence of Intraverbals for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

The present study evaluated the emergence of intraverbals for 2 children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Prior to baseline, both children demonstrated tact, tact function, listener, and listener by function responses with 12 pictorial stimuli, yet they failed to demonstrate intraverbals related to the function of the items (e.g., "What do you do with [item]?" and "What do you use to [function]?"). Following baseline, previously mastered related tact, tact function, listener, and listener by function tasks were presented prior to probe trials for the target item-function and function-item intraverbals. Results showed that interspersal of the related tasks for a subset of the intraverbals led to the emergence of untrained item-function and function-item intraverbals for both participants. In Experiment 2, the long-term effects of this remedial training on the emergence of untrained intraverbals was evaluated as new tact and listener responses were trained. Results of Experiment 2 showed that tact function and listener by function training was sufficient to establish the emergence of item-function and function-item intraverbals in the absence of related-task interspersal. These results are discussed in relation to current explanations for emergent responding.

Keywords: autism; emergence; intraverbal; listener responding; tact; verbal behavior.

Fig. 1.

Map of relations evaluated for each target. Relations shown with a solid black line indicate existing skills, evaluated in pretraining. These include the AB relation (listener), BD relation (tact), CB relation (listener by function), and BE relation (tact function). Relations shown with a dashed black line indicate skills to be evaluated within the protocol. These include the AE relation (item-function intraverbal) and CD relation (function-item intraverbal)

Fig. 2.

Results of daily probes are shown for Michael and Cody. Black bars represent the number of intraverbals emitted during the daily probe session that had been exposed to interspersal treatment. Gray bars represent the number of untrained intraverbals emitted during the daily probe session (i.e., not exposed to interspersal treatment). The filled circles represent the cumulative number of intraverbals emitted across daily probe sessions

Fig. 3.

Results of daily probe sessions across conditions are shown for Michael. Open squares represent item-function intraverbals (AE), open diamonds represent function-item intraverbals (CD), closed circles represent tact function responses (BE), and closed triangles represent listener by function responses (CB)