Verbal relations within instruction: Are there subclasses of the intraverbal?
Definition, exemplification, and example-ID intraverbals act like three different skills, not one.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with college students who had no disabilities.
They taught three kinds of intraverbal questions: give a definition, give an example, or pick the right example.
Each type used the same bird and flower concepts, so the only change was the question form.
What they found
Definition questions were the hardest to learn and did not help with the other two types.
Example questions were easier and also improved picking the right example.
Picking the right example was the easiest, but it did not help with giving definitions or examples.
The data say the intraverbal is not one big class — it has subclasses that behave differently.
How this fits with other research
Rosenthal et al. (1980) showed that teaching comprehension first can cut later training time.
This new study adds that the kind of intraverbal you pick matters just as much as the order.
Bondy et al. (2004) mapped PECS steps onto Skinner’s verbal operants for kids with autism.
Their work extends this paper by showing how multiply controlled operants fit real AAC training.
Davison et al. (2002) proved you can teach contextual control over equivalence classes with lots of exemplars.
Both papers agree that training history shapes later stimulus control, but this study shows the split lives inside the intraverbal itself.
Why it matters
When you write intraverbal programs, do not lump all “WH” questions together.
Start with example-giving tasks if you want broad transfer.
Save definition drills for last, and expect to teach them almost from scratch.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Six college undergraduates received programmed concept training on three kinds of intraverbal relations. These relations involved definition, exemplification, and example identification questions. The experimenter presented the questions, the subject answered them in writing, and the experimenter provided specific corrective consequences. After completing the training on a concept, the subject immediately received a test on the concept. The test included novel questions similar to the kind used in training (extension tasks) and question types that were not used in training but which were also considered intraverbal relations (transfer tasks). Training results indicated rapid, errorful responding on example identification tasks and slow, accurate responding on exemplification and definition tasks. Test results indicated rapid, errorful responding on example identification extension tasks; slow, accurate responding on exemplification extension tasks; and slow, errorful responding on definition extension tasks. In testing, differential responding occurred on transfer tasks as a function of the kind of intraverbal training received, and substantially lower levels of performance were obtained on transfer tasks than on extension tasks. It appears that the intraverbal can be subdivided into more specific categories of operants.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1985 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1985.43-301