Emergent Intraverbal and Reverse Intraverbal Behavior Following Listener Training in Children with Autism Spectrum...

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often face challenges with language development, particularly in spontaneous verbal communication.
• Intraverbal behavior, the ability to respond to verbal stimuli without the speaker being present, is a critical skill for conversational fluency.
• Listener training, focusing on understanding spoken language, is a foundational skill that may impact expressive language abilities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if listener training leads to the emergence of intraverbal and reverse intraverbal behavior in children with ASD.
• To assess the effectiveness of a multiple baseline design in evaluating listener training interventions for language skills in ASD.
• To explore the potential of establishing listener behavior as a pathway for developing advanced verbal repertoires.

Main Methods:

• Six children with ASD participated in the study.
• Participants received listener training on three sets of three "when?" questions.
• A multiple baseline design across behaviors (stimulus sets) was employed to measure the impact of the intervention.

Main Results:

• Intraverbal behavior emerged in five out of six participants following listener training.
• One participant required additional listener and intraverbal training for intraverbal behavior to emerge.
• Reverse intraverbal responding was observed in three participants across all question sets.

Conclusions:

• Listener training can be an effective strategy for fostering emergent intraverbal behavior in children with ASD.
• The findings suggest that developing strong listener skills may facilitate the development of both intraverbal and reverse intraverbal responding.
• Further research is recommended to identify specific skill repertoires that enhance transfer of learning and generalization of these language skills.