Comparing the Effect of Echoic and Listener Responding in the Development of Complex Intraverbals

This study aimed to compare the effects of echoic and listener responding in the emergence of complex intraverbal behavior in four children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Each participant was taught to provide an echoic response or a listener response for different discriminative stimuli for each condition. We used a nonconcurrent multiple probe design across participants and adapted an alternating treatment design to compare the effects between the two conditions. Pre- and posttests were used to evaluate the effects of the two different prompt types in the emergence of complex intraverbals. The results indicate that the echoic response was more effective than the listener response at increasing the emergence of complex intraverbal responses in three out of four participants.