Evaluation of tact and listener instruction as a first step toward establishing intraverbal responding

Abstract

The present research compared the efficiency of different teaching procedures on the acquisition of intraverbal responses in typically developing children between the ages of five and nine years old. In Experiment 1, four participants were taught to categorize birds and flowers by their dictated state name, either receptively (as in CL instruction) or expressively (as in CT instruction). Following mastery of the instructional conditions, participants were tested to determine if either instructional condition produced untaught, yet related, verbal responses. The results revealed that CT instruction was more efficient than CL instruction because it produced emergent intraverbal, category listener and equivalence responding to criterion levels for all four participants, and CL instruction only did so for one participant. DI instruction was provided following failed intraverbal postprobes in the CL condition and produced passing performance on intraverbal postprobes for the three participants who required it. However, CL instruction followed by DI instruction was in all cases a more time-consuming way to establish intraverbal responses than was CT instruction alone. Experiment 2 compared CT instruction directly to DI instruction for three participants. Results revealed that CT instruction reliably produced passing performance on all postprobes for three out of three participants; however DI instruction only did so for two. These results suggest that an intraverbal repertoire may be taught indirectly yet efficiently through CT instruction.