Facilitating the emergence of convergent intraverbals in children with autism

Four children with autism joined the study.

The team first taught the kids the exact six prerequisite skills that Sundberg & Sundberg list for convergent intraverbals.

After each child hit mastery on every prerequisite, the adults asked new convergent questions they had never practiced.

A multiple-baseline design across kids showed whether the new answers popped up without extra teaching.

Every child started answering the brand-new convergent questions at mastery level right after the prerequisites were done.

No child needed extra drills on the new intraverbals.

The skills emerged on the first try and stayed strong.

Connell et al. (2004) did an earlier computer lesson that also created emergent skills.

They taught letter sounds and kids suddenly matched printed words they had never been taught.

Both studies show the same big idea: build the right foundation and new untaught skills appear.

Breeman et al. (2020) warns that skipping reinforcement or error correction can double learning time.

Their data remind you to run the prerequisite drills with full integrity so the emergence seen by DeSouza et al. still happens quickly.

You can save hours of drill time.

Teach the six Sundberg prerequisites first, then test novel convergent questions.

If the child answers correctly, you know the foundation is solid and you can move on instead of running extra trials.

This keeps therapy efficient and gives the learner more time to work on other goals.