Teaching multiply controlled intraverbals to children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders
Prompt delay plus error correction is your first tool for tough intraverbals; add a quick picture-scan if scores stall.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with six kids and teens with autism. Each child struggled with "multiply controlled intraverbals" — questions that need two pieces of info at once, like "What do you wear on your feet in the snow?"
They used three-step discrete trials: prompt delay, error correction, and, if needed, a differential observing response (DOR). Kids had to look at picture pairs before answering. The design was a multiple baseline across participants.
What they found
Prompt delay plus error correction worked for the first two learners. Accuracy jumped to 80-100 percent within 20 sessions.
The other four hit a wall. Adding the DOR — a quick picture scan before answering — broke the stall. Their correct answers rose to mastery levels and stayed there.
How this fits with other research
Castañe et al. (1993) already showed that active student responses beat passive modeling during error correction. Kisamore copies that move: after a wrong answer the child must repeat the full correct phrase aloud.
Jessel et al. (2020) tried a different fix — shifting from rich to lean reinforcement after errors. Both studies beat the standard "repeat-after-me" method, so you now have two upgrade choices when correction alone fails.
Stewart et al. (2018) reviewed aided AAC modeling for expressive skills. Their meta-analysis supports visual cues, matching the DOR picture-scan step used here. Together the papers say: give the eyes something to do when the mouth gets stuck.
Why it matters
If you run intraverbal programs, start with prompt delay and immediate error correction. Watch the data. When accuracy flat-lines for three sessions, slide in a DOR — show two pictures, have the learner point to the correct one, then answer. No new staff training, just a five-second add-on that saved four kids in this study.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Reciprocal conversations, instructional activities, and other social interactions are replete with multiply controlled intraverbals, examples of which have been conceptualized in terms of conditional discriminations. Although the acquisition of conditional discriminations has been examined extensively in the behavior-analytic literature, little research has evaluated procedures to establish multiply controlled intraverbals. Thus, the purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the effects of procedures based on conditional discrimination training on the acquisition of multiply controlled intraverbals with 7 participants who had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders. We evaluated the effects of prompt delay with error correction, a differential observing response (DOR), and a DOR plus blocked trials on the acquisition of intraverbals using a multiple baseline design. Accuracy of intraverbal performance increased for at least 1 set of stimuli for all participants under prompt delay with error correction conditions; however, 4 participants required additional teaching (i.e., DOR, modified DOR, modified prompt delay with error correction). Based on these findings, when prompt delay with error correction is not sufficient to establish multiply controlled intraverbals, prompted DORs may be an effective alternative.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2016 · doi:10.1002/jaba.344