Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) refers to a wide range of aided and unaided modes that are employed with a diverse group of people to support a range of language and communication outcomes. Children whose comprehension of spoken language greatly exceeds their ability to express themselves within that modality can be described as…

Response interruption and redirection (RIRD) is an intervention that involves presenting demands or other types of distracters to interrupt an interfering behavior and redirect it to a more appropriate response. It targets the decrease of repetitive, stereotypic, and self-injurious behaviors. Research indicates that stereotypy is commonly…

B. F. Skinner's (1957) "Verbal Behavior" had a limited influence on empirical research in the first few decades following its publication, but an increase in empirical activity has been evident in recent years. The purpose of this article is to update previous analyses that have quantified the influence of "Verbal Behavior" on…

Background: Two procedures were developed to teach individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders labels (tacts) for various private events (emotions): Study 1 attempted to distinguish them from pure tacts and mands (requests); and Study 2 attempted to train initiating a conversation with grammatically correct subject-verb-comment construction.…

The application of telehealth technology to conduct functional analysis (FA) and functional communication training (FCT) is emerging for children with developmental disabilities and behaviour support needs. The current study was designed to extend FA + FCT for self-injurious behaviour by using telehealth in home with parents as interventionists…

Reciprocal conversations, instructional activities, and other social interactions are replete with multiply controlled intraverbals, examples of which have been conceptualized in terms of conditional discriminations. Although the acquisition of conditional discriminations has been examined extensively in the behavior-analytic literature, little…

The purpose of the current paper is to describe the impact of applied behaviour analysis on language treatment for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) diagnoses. Specifically, this paper will describe Skinner's theory of verbal behaviour and its contributions to evidence-based treatments for communication deficits among individuals with…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have difficulty inferring the private events of others, including private verbal behavior (e.g., thoughts), private emotional responses, and private establishing operations, often referred to as "perspective taking" by the general psychology community. Children with ASD also have…

This study replicated and extended Wright (2006) and Whitehurst, Ironsmith, and Goldfein (1974) by examining whether preschool aged children would increase their use of passive grammatical voice rather than using the more age-appropriate active grammatical construction when the former was modeled by an adult. Results showed that 5 of the 6…

A literature review was conducted to describe important concepts involved in functional analysis of verbal behavior as well as to evaluate empirical research findings on acquisition of picture exchange-based vs. signed mands to suggest instructional implications for teachers and therapists to teach functional communication skills to children with…

We investigated the influence of motivating operations on the generalization of newly taught mands across settings and communication partners for 3 children with autism. Two conditions were implemented prior to generalization probes. In the first condition, participants were given access to a preferred item until they rejected the item (i.e.,…

The current investigation evaluated the effects of extinction and prompts on training and generalization of peer-directed mands for preferred items using a picture exchange communication system with 2 children diagnosed with autism. Results showed that independent mands with a peer increased during treatment for both participants, generalized to a…

Past research has shown that response interruption and redirection (RIRD) can effectively decrease automatically reinforced motor behavior (Hagopian & Adelinis, 2001). Ahearn, Clark, MacDonald, and Chung (2007) found that a procedural adaptation of RIRD reduced vocal stereotypy and increased appropriate vocalizations for some children, although…

Children with autism often do not learn to mand for information without structured teaching. Studies have demonstrated that manipulation of establishing operations (EOs), prompts, prompt fading, and differential reinforcement are effective in teaching children with autism to ask "wh" questions such as "what," "who," and "where." To date, no…

Several studies have demonstrated effects of stimulus-stimulus pairing (SSP) on children's vocalizations, but numerous treatment failures have also been reported. The present study attempted to isolate procedural variables related to failures of SSP to condition speech sounds as reinforcers. Three boys diagnosed with autism-spectrum disorders…