Analyzing the Functional Interdependence of Verbal Behavior with Multiaxial Radar Charts
Radar charts turn weekly verbal operant counts into an easy circle picture that tracks language growth in kids with autism.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Mason et al. (2024) tracked one child with autism and one typical peer for several months.
They scored each kid’s verbal operants—mand, tact, echoic, intraverbal—every week.
Instead of bar graphs, they drew round radar charts to see all operants at once.
What they found
The charts showed clear shapes: the typical peer’s circle filled evenly, the autistic child’s had deep dips.
Over time the dips shrank, letting the team see language growth like lines on a height chart.
How this fits with other research
Greenlee et al. (2024) sketched the same radar idea on paper; Mason shows it works with real kids.
Mason et al. (2022) offered Cochran’s Q to spot over-selectivity; the 2024 radar gives a fuller picture of the whole verbal field.
Goulardins et al. (2013) urged us to run verbal functional analyses—radar charts now give a fast visual report of those results.
Why it matters
You can print a blank radar, shade in today’s operant scores, and hand it to parents. One glance shows which language pieces need work and if last month’s plan is working. Try it during reassessment week.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The functional analysis of complex verbal behavior requires an evaluation of topographically similar responses under multiple sources of control. Traditional graphical displays of behavior were designed to show the manipulation of isolated controlling variables and may not be amenable to displaying the multidimensional properties of complex behavior. Researchers have recently demonstrated the use of multiaxial radar charts for comparing the functional performance of biological systems. Here we extend the use of multidimensional analyses to compare the relative performance distributions of verbal behavior across four potential controlling variables. First, we provide a conceptual analysis of intraverbal and extraverbal control as continua along which stimuli range from formal to thematic and explain how the intersection of these stimulus fields creates a radar chart for multidimensional analysis. Then we demonstrate how data may be gathered through a verbal operant experimental analysis. We employed repeated measures to map the conditioning history of a child with autism spectrum disorder across 2 years of early intensive behavioral intervention and analyzed the results using shape descriptors for quantitative comparisons. We also compared the polygonal language profiles of children with autism against that of a neurotypical peer. Extending a multidimensional analysis to the field of verbal behavior provides the basis for a language growth chart that researchers and clinicians can use to monitor language acquisition over time. We discuss the use of radar charts as a framework for understanding the interdependence of verbal operants and suggest their use for complex analyses of complex verbal behavior. The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40614-024-00404-6.
Perspectives on Behavior Science, 2024 · doi:10.1007/s40614-024-00404-6