Further evaluation of component skills that facilitate the emergence of intraverbal tacts

Abstract

Identifying component skills necessary for the emergence of intraverbal tacts, or verbal responses under control of both a verbal and nonverbal antecedent stimulus, is important because the occasion for this skill often occurs in a child's everyday life. Previous research has begun to identify a sequence of component skills that may lead to the emergence of multiply controlled intraverbals. However, it remains unclear which component skills are necessary versus sufficient. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of teaching a subset of component skills, element tact and intraverbal categorization, to identify the skills sufficient for emergence of intraverbal tacts. A multiple-probe design was used to assess intraverbal-tact emergence for five participants diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder during pre-and post-element-tact and intraverbal-categorization teaching sessions. Emergence of intraverbal tacts was also assessed during recombinative-generalization probes. Results indicated that intraverbal tacts emerged for all participants following acquisition of element tacts and intraverbal categorizations. As no other component skills were taught, these data suggest that these component skills may be sufficient for intraverbal tact emergence. Implications for identifying necessary component skills and directions for future research are discussed.