A Methodology for Assessing the Functions of Emerging Speech in Children With Developmental Disabilities

Abstract

An approach based on Skinner's (1957) theory of verbal behavior has been developed to understand and teach elementary communication skills to children with autism and developmental disabilities (Sundberg & Partington, 1998). However, few studies have directly examined the characteristics of emerging language in children with developmental disabilities. The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate an assessment for identifying the elementary functions of vocal speech in children. Participants were 4 children with developmental disabilities, aged 6 years to 12 years, who exhibited at least one distinguishable vocal response (word or phrase) frequently in the natural environment. The assessment focused on three verbal operants delineated by Skinner (mand, tact, and intraverbal). One or more functions were identified for at least one vocal response of each child. Results suggested that this assessment would be useful for (a) evaluating Skinner's theory, (b) guiding decisions about language training for individual children, and (c) studying the nature of expressive language development in children with developmental disabilities.

An Exploratory Analysis of Task‐interspersal Procedures While Teaching Object Labels to Children With Autism

“…Other studies did not specify whether participants had previously acquired the skills that were targeted for improvement (Robinson & Skinner, 2002;Wildmon, Skinner, Watson, & Garrett, 2004). Most important, mastered and unknown tasks may not have been differentiated adequately in many of these studies (see Lerman et al, 2005, for a discussion).…”

“…Highly preferred reinforcers identified via a systematic preference assessment (Fisher et al, 1992) were provided for correct object labels that were reportedly unknown. Including a reinforcement component decreased the likelihood that a known object label would be incorrectly classified as unknown due to noncompliance (Lerman et al, 2005). However, the type of reinforcer provided for reportedly known object labels and motor tasks depended on the experiment and phase.…”

Functional Analysis of Verbal Behavior: A Brief Review

“…Although any demonstration of a functional relation between a verbal response and some environmental variable constitutes an FA of verbal behavior, Lerman et al (2005) were the first to report an assessment of verbal behavior similar to that described for problem behavior (i.e., Iwata et al, 1982Iwata et al, /1994. Based on Skinner's (1957) functional taxonomy of language and the FA methodology described by Iwata et al, Lerman et al reported an FA of verbal behavior that involved several test conditions, each with a corresponding control condition, in which motivating operations, discriminative stimuli, and consequences were manipulated.…”

“…Recently, the logic of such analyses has been extended to verbal behavior, with promising results (Kelley et al, 2007;LaFrance, Wilder, Normand, & Squires, 2009;Lerman et al, 2005;Normand, Machado, Hustyi, & Morley, 2011;Normand, Severtson, & Beavers, 2008;Plavnick & Ferreri, 2011). Similar to research on functional analyses (FAs) of problem behavior, the verbal behavior research suggests that a priori understanding of the variables that evoke and maintain verbal behavior can be used to develop effective interventions (e.g., Plavnick & Ferreri, 2011).…”

Does Mastery of ABLA Level 6 Make it Easier for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities to Learn to Name Objects?

“…Unlike some traditional models of language development, Skinner's theory does not assume that individuals learn the meaning of words independent of context and then use the words correctly for different purposes. Instead, the same vocal responses have separate functions, depending on the context (Lerman et al, 2005).…”