Teaching intraverbal behavior to preschool children.
Teach intraverbals directly—tacting pictures won’t create question answers; use a prompt-fade that moves control from the picture to your voice.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The researchers wanted to teach preschoolers to answer questions without pictures. They used a transfer-of-control prompt-fade. First the child named a picture. Then the teacher asked a question about the picture while it was still there. Next the teacher slowly moved the picture away while asking the same question. Finally the child answered with no picture at all.
The team tracked each child’s answers across three different question sets. They used a multiple-baseline design so they could show the teaching caused the change.
What they found
All children learned to answer the questions even when the picture was gone. Their scores on a standard verbal-fluency test also went up. The study showed that naming a picture and answering a question are two separate skills. Just because a child can name something does not mean they can talk about it later without the picture.
How this fits with other research
Striefel et al. (1974) did the same kind of prompt-fade 19 years earlier, but they moved control from a hand cue to a spoken word in teenagers with intellectual disability. Nangle et al. (1993) now show the same method works for building brand-new intraverbals in typical preschoolers.
Todorov et al. (1984) also used a transfer-of-control package, yet they taught manual signs to adults with severe disabilities. The method keeps working even when you change the response form or the population.
Neuringer et al. (1968) looks like a contradiction at first. They boosted preschool speech with pure reinforcement and no prompts. The key difference is the goal: J wanted any spontaneous talk, while W wanted specific answers to specific questions. Prompts are needed when the child has never given the answer before.
Why it matters
If you work on early language, do not assume tacting pictures will create intraverbals. Build them on purpose with a quick prompt-fade. Start with the picture, ask the question, then slowly remove the picture while you keep asking. You can run this in five-minute bursts during circle time or play. Track each question set separately so you know when the child truly owns the answer.
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Join Free →Pick one picture the child already names, ask a related question while the picture is in view, then fade the picture out over five trials.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Four preschool children who were taught to tact a set of Peabody picture cards were unable to emit those same responses under intraverbal conditions. A transfer of stimulus control procedure was used to bring the responses under intraverbal control. A multiple probe design was used to demonstrate experimental control. The results indicate that the transfer procedure was effective in developing the responses as intraverbals, and in increasing the subjects' scores on the Verbal Fluency subtest of the McCarthy Scales. A second study demonstrated that teaching four additional subjects to tact both the items and the class of which the items were members resulted in the untrained emergence of a few intraverbal responses for two of four subjects. For the other subjects and classes, it was still necessary to teach each of the responses as intraverbals, further demonstrating that tacts and intraverbals are separate verbal operants. The implications of these results for the use of Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior for studying typical language development are discussed.
The Analysis of verbal behavior, 1993 · doi:10.1007/BF03392883