The vocal behavior of five children was recorded and analyzed during pre-and post-pairing conditions. Between these conditions there was a pairing condition where a target sound, word, or phrase was paired with an established form of reinforcement (e.g., tickling). In the first experiment all of the children emitted the targeted responses during the post-pairing condition. The results showed that the children acquired new vocal and verbal responses by pairing neutral stimuli with established forms of conditioned or unconditioned reinforcement. Perhaps the most significant aspect of these results was that new vocal responses were acquired by the children without the use of direct reinforcement, echoic training, or prompts. In the second experiment several parameters of the pairing procedure were examined. The results of the two experiments have implications for the analysis of native language acquisition, and for the development of language intervention procedures for individuals who fail to acquire language.Most children around the world readily acquire their parent's or caretaker's language, despite the fact that no special instruction is provided. This phenomenon, typically identified as native language acquisition, has generated a substantial amount of research and controversy (e.g., Chomsky, 1959;Skinner, 1957). What makes this universal event intriguing is that native language acquisition occurs only early in life, and only for a first lan-The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Cassie Braam,

Individuals with autism often experience difficulty acquiring a functional intraverbal repertoire, despite demonstrating strong mand, tact, and listener skills. This learning problem may be related to the fact that the primary antecedent variable for most intraverbal behavior involves a type of multiple control identified as a verbal conditional discrimination (VC(D)). The current study is a descriptive analysis that sought to determine if there is a general sequence of intraverbal acquisition by typically developing children and for children with autism, and if this sequence could be used as a framework for intraverbal assessment and intervention. Thirty-nine typically developing children and 71 children with autism were administered an 80-item intraverbal subtest that contained increasingly difficult intraverbal questions and VC(D)s. For the typically developing children the results showed that there was a correlation between age and correct intraverbal responses. However, there was variability in the scores of children who were the same age. An error analysis revealed that compound VC(D)s were the primary cause of errors. Children with autism made the same types of errors as typically developing children who scored at their level on the subtest. These data suggest a potential framework and sequence for intraverbal assessment and intervention.