Assessing the Verbal Behavior of a Linguistically Diverse Speaker with Autism

For speakers belonging to multiple verbal communities, functional analyses of verbal behavior allow for dynamic control over response topography. The simple practice of allowing the speaker the freedom to select the language of instruction minimizes cultural bias and hegemony. We extended the research on functional analyses of verbal behavior to include a speaker of multiple languages in a quasi-experimental case study. We employed verbal operant experimental (VOX) analyses as a repeated measure of language acquisition with a linguistically diverse, 7-year-old Indian boy with autism. The VOX analyses were conducted as part of the child's early intensive behavioral intervention, and we observed the impact of an immersive foreign language experience on his verbal repertoire with follow-up VOX analyses conducted in three topographically distinct languages: English, Telugu, and Tamil. The results show a dynamic hierarchy of strength between the three languages, with overarching patterns across the three assessments. The implications for using VOX analyses to assess the functional language skills of multilingual speakers with autism are discussed, and areas of future research are highlighted.