The Use of Instructive Feedback to Promote Emergent Tact and Intraverbal Control: A Replication

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.

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