Analysis of Verbal Behavior最新文献

This systematic review evaluated the effects of foreign tact training on emergent learning outcomes in ten published studies. We also conducted a meta-analysis of aggregate data from seven studies comparing outcomes of foreign tact training with other verbal operant procedures. The preliminary findings indicated foreign tact training produced criterion-level responses in 84 of 106 (79.2%) post-test probes across 37 learners and 55 evaluations of foreign tact training. The meta-analysis results revealed significantly higher within-subjects mean levels of emergent responding following foreign tact training than foreign-to-native intraverbal, native-to-foreign intraverbal, and foreign listener training. Emergent outcomes for adults were not significantly greater than for children. Finally, foreign tact training was slightly more efficient than the other verbal operant procedures, although most of the differences were not statistically significant.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40616-022-00170-z.

The presentation of non-target stimuli during trial-based instruction is known as instructive feedback. Previous research on instructive feedback has shown that learners with developmental disabilities may acquire these additional (i.e., secondary) targets without further training. Embedding secondary targets during the review of previously mastered targets may be used to bolster instructional gains. The current study evaluated the efficacy of embedding secondary targets during maintenance sessions for a child with autism spectrum disorder. The participant's responding met the mastery criterion for two target sets presented during the consequence portion of maintenance trials. For the remaining five target sets, a more intrusive intervention was required. Additional research is needed to evaluate the conditions under which secondary targets may be acquired.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40616-022-00174-9.

We evaluated audience control over children's honest reports using a reversal (ABA or ABAB) design. Four typically developing children performed a computer game in which they had to shoot a target and then report on their performance during and at the end of each session. Baseline assessed the accuracy of their reports in the absence of an experimenter. During the audience condition, an adult was present in the room and observed the child during the task. Participants accurately reported their errors when an adult was present, whereas they lied about their performance by systematically reporting errors as correct responses when an adult was absent. Honest reports about their total score at the end of the session also increased in the presence of the audience member. These results suggest that the presence of an adult exerted control over children's honest/accurate reports. We discussed the reasons why the presence of an adult may have served as a discriminative stimulus for honest reports.

Control by compound antecedent stimuli in verbal behavior represents an understudied but promising area of research. To date, reference to compound verbal stimulus control has generally only included descriptions of convergent multiple control. A sizeable experimental literature exists on the topic of compound stimulus control, which differs from convergent multiple control in that the stimulus elements often do not have a prior conditioning history (i.e., do not separately strengthen any response). The current study attempted to bridge the experimental and verbal behavior literatures by including a two-component antecedent verbal stimulus during intraverbal training for which neither component currently served an evocative function. Subsequent analyses of stimulus control suggested overshadowing by temporal location in the compound verbal stimulus and lack of emergence of the divergent intraverbal relation across all sets. Additional research is needed on compound stimulus control and verbal behavior researchers may be poised to answer several questions relevant to the experimental and verbal behavior literatures on the topic.

Music is a unique form of verbal stimuli (Reynolds & Hayes, The Psychological Record, 67(3), 413-421, 2017) and the literature has indicated some success in using procedures involving the frame of coordination or stimulus equivalence to teach early piano skills to learners with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD; Hill et al., Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 53(1), 188-208, 2020). However, these studies only targeted narrow skills rather than a complete repertoire. Also, whether such teaching procedure is effective for young children with ASD at different ages, with different needs, and with common accompanied diagnosis, is unknown. The current study (a) explored the possibility of applying relational frame theory (RFT; Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, & Roche, 2001) in piano program development that aims to teach a complete early piano repertoire, and (b) confirmed the effectiveness of an adjusted teaching procedure using the frame of coordination on teaching early piano skills to six young children on the autism spectrum. A multiple probe across participants design was used. After direct training of two relations (AC & AE), post-instructional tests were conducted on eight relations. The results showed that with remedial training, five out of six participants demonstrated mutual entailment, combinatorial entailment, and transformation of stimulus function in these relations. All participants could read and play the song on keyboard without extra training. The study provided practical guidance on applying the procedure to these young learners. Implications of RFT in piano curriculum development were also discussed.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40616-022-00175-8.

Instructive feedback (IF) involves incorporating additional acquisition targets into skill-acquisition programs. A recent study by Frampton and Shillingsburg (2020) found that IF led to emergent verbal operants with two elementary-aged children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The current study replicated Frampton and Shillingsburg with two children with ASD. Therapists conducted sessions of mastered listener-by-name trials (e.g., "Show me otter," with pictures of otter, dog, and elephant) with IF statements for features of the target stimuli (e.g., "It lives in rivers.") embedded during the consequence portion of the trial. We evaluated the acquisition of secondary targets and emergent responses using a concurrent multiple baseline across sets design. We observed increased correct responding for secondary targets and emergent responses for all three sets of stimuli with one participant. The other participant emitted correct responses for secondary targets and emergent operants with the first set but not with the other two sets of stimuli. Results suggested that IF can lead to emergent verbal operants, but the extent of emergence may be idiosyncratic.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40616-022-00171-y.

Recombinative generalization is the production of responses in the presence of novel combinations of known components. For example, after learning "red triangle" and "blue square," recombinative generalization is observed when a child can tact "red square" and "blue triangle." Recombinative generalization can emerge from a history of matrix training, which involves carefully selecting and arranging stimuli and responses along at least two axes and training a subset of responses. With three children with autism spectrum disorder, we compared recombinative generalization of object-action or feature-object tacts when the component stimuli were trained before combination stimuli, trained along with combination stimuli, or untrained (i.e., combination only). For two participants, training the components along with some combinations led to the most untrained targets acquired without direct teaching. For the other participant, training the combinations only led to the greatest proportion of untrained targets acquired without direct teaching. We discuss stimulus control promoted by each teaching arrangement and suggestions for future research on recombinative generalization.

The purpose of the current study was to extend the findings on the use of the go/no-go successive matching-to-sample (S-MTS) procedure to establish auditory equivalence classes. Eight college students learned to conditionally relate nonverbal auditory stimuli into three, 3-member classes. Following training, all participants met the emergence criterion for symmetry, and six out of eight participants met the emergence criterion for transitivity/equivalence. Furthermore, all participants responded with either an experimenter-defined or a unique tact, and five participants related these names intraverbally. Although these results replicate previous findings, albeit with stimuli that cannot be echoed, possible verbal mediation via tact and intraverbal behavior seems to have occurred.

Echolalia can negatively impact multiple skill areas in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), including skills related to academic and social performance. The purpose of this study was to employ a multiple probe across participants design to evaluate the effects of tact training on delayed echolalia in three children in China diagnosed with ASD. The results of this study indicated that tact training was effective in decreasing echolalia and increasing appropriate tacts for all three children. The effects were maintained 7 weeks following the completion of training.