Further evaluation of component skills that facilitate the emergence of intraverbal tacts.

Researchers studied how to help children with autism learn to respond to both spoken words and what they see at the same time. They taught 5 children with autism two specific skills: naming parts of things and grouping things by speaking about categories. After learning these skills, all children could successfully combine spoken and visual information. This is important because children use this skill often in everyday situations.

This study investigated which component skills are sufficient for children with autism to develop intraverbal tacts - verbal responses that combine both verbal and visual information. Using a multiple-probe design with five participants with autism spectrum disorder, researchers taught only two specific skills: element tact (naming parts of objects) and intraverbal categorization (verbal categorizing skills). Results showed that all participants successfully developed intraverbal tacts after acquiring these two component skills, without requiring additional training in other previously identified component skills. This suggests these two skills may be sufficient rather than just necessary for this important communication ability that frequently occurs in daily life.

Findings suggest practitioners may focus training on element tacts and intraverbal categorization to efficiently develop multiply controlled verbal responses. This could streamline intervention approaches and reduce training time while still achieving functional communication outcomes for children with autism.

Small sample size of five participants limits generalizability. The abstract does not specify participant characteristics beyond autism diagnosis. Study design details and measurement procedures are not fully described in the abstract.

Identifying component skills necessary for the emergence of intraverbal tacts, or verbal responses under control of both a verbal and nonverbal antecedent stimulus, is important because the occasion for this skill often occurs in a child's everyday life. Previous research has begun to identify a sequence of component skills that may lead to the emergence of multiply controlled intraverbals. However, it remains unclear which component skills are necessary versus sufficient. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of teaching a subset of component skills, element tact and intraverbal categorization, to identify the skills sufficient for emergence of intraverbal tacts.

A multiple-probe design was used to assess intraverbal-tact emergence for five participants diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder during pre-and post-element-tact and intraverbal-categorization teaching sessions. Emergence of intraverbal tacts was also assessed during recombinative-generalization probes. Results indicated that intraverbal tacts emerged for all participants following acquisition of element tacts and intraverbal categorizations. As no other component skills were taught, these data suggest that these component skills may be sufficient for intraverbal tact emergence.

Implications for identifying necessary component skills and directions for future research are discussed.