Referent-Based Instruction to Strengthen the Verbal Behavior of Early Learners with Autism and Related Language Disorders

Abstract

The current study evaluated the use of precision teaching to address the verbal behavior deficits of children with autism and other language disorders. From 2013 to 2018, a high-research-activity doctoral university in the south-central United States operated a free clinic that provided applied behavior anlaysis services to early learners in the local community. Participants received referent-based verbal behavior instruction to strengthen their functional language skills by systematically transferring stimulus control across 4 primary verbal operants: mands, echoics, tacts, and sequelics. Referent-based instruction is premised on the notion that proportionate levels of strength among these 4 operants provide the relational flexibility of naturalistic speaking observed in typical language development. This article details the language gains made by 49 participants who received 13 weeks of intervention for 90 min a day, 4 days a week. Relative strengths and weaknesses were identified in the verbal repertoire of each participant, and individualized fluency aims were subsequently developed. Results of pretest and posttest comparisons show that there was a large effect size within the verbal behavior gains of participants who received precision teaching. Implications for implementing referent-based instruction, as well as future areas of research, are discussed.

Keywords: Precision teaching; Referent-based instruction; Stimulus control; Verbal behavior.

Fig. 1.

The stimulus control ratio for Participant 39. Results of the SCoRE assessment show that the participant’s verbal repertoire was primarily under the control of echoics and tacts, followed by mands and sequelics. At the time of the pretest, Participant 39 demonstrated a moderate repertoire of .53

Fig. 2.

An RBI data sheet showing the participant’s responses to various echoic, tact, and sequelic prompts across nine discontinuous 1-min fluency probes. Each timing assessed a variety of verbal operants, but the individual targets varied across each timing. As the 90-min session progressed, new targets were added to subsequent fluency probes

Fig. 3.

A timings chart showing a participant’s progress within and across RBI sessions. Learning pictures on the timings chart were used to make data-based decisions with respect to each participant’s instructional programming. Four different learning pictures are represented on here: Jaws (9/26, 9/27), Get Truckin’ (10/3), Dive (10/4, 10/6), and Takeoff (10/5)

Fig. 4.

Box plots showing the average pretest (left) and posttest (right) SCoREs for 49 participants with language disorders across 13 weeks of referent-based verbal behavior instruction. The dark lines in each box represent the median SCoRE for both the pretest (Mdn = .53) and posttest (Mdn = .77)

Fig. 5.

Box plots showing differences across pretest and posttest SCoREs for participants who began the study with emergent (>.20), practical (.20–.49), moderate (.50–.79), and strong (≥.80) verbal repertoires