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JOURNALOFAPPLIEDBEHAVIORANALYSIS 2006, 39, 233–237 NUMBER2 (SUMMER2006) GENERALIZATION OF TACTING ACTIONS IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISM GLADYS WILLIAMS APPLIEDBEHAVIORALCONSULTANTSERVICES,NEWYORK JOSE´ JULIO CARNERERO CENTROAL-MUDAR¨IS,CO´RDOBA,SPAIN AND LUIS ANTONIO PE´REZ-GONZA´LEZ UNIVERSITYOFOVIEDO,SPAIN This intervention compared the effects of two procedures on the generalization of a tacting repertoire (labeling) in 6 children with autism spectrum disorder. In one procedure the verbal antecedentstimulus‘‘Whatisshedoing?’’appearedtogetherwithapersonperforminganaction; in the other procedure, the antecedent stimulus was just the presence of the action. In initial tests, children emitted tacts only when the action was presented with the verbal antecedent. Thereafter, they learned to tact an action without the verbal antecedent and received tests to evaluategeneralizationtoanotheraction.Resultsindicatedthatinordertoobtaingeneralization oftactingactions,itwasnecessarytolearntotactotheractionswithouttheverbalantecedentas wellaslearningtotacttheactionwiththeverbalantecedent.Thesefindingshaverelevancefor generalizationoftactingactionsfromcontrolbyverbalantecedentstonaturalconditionsandthe production ofspontaneous language. DESCRIPTORS: tacts, labeling, generalization, tacting actions, spontaneous language, autism _______________________________________________________________________________ A problem for many children with autism is The linguistic-based curriculum consisted of that they tend not to use language unless they presentingantecedentstimulisuchas‘‘Whatdo are prompted to do so (Krantz & McClanna- you want?’’ or ‘‘What is this?’’ The verbal- han,1998).Thus,itisimportantthattheylearn behavior-basedcurriculumconsistedofteaching tolabel(tact)objectsoreventsintheabsenceof children to respond in the presence of the cues from other persons. Williams and Greer object, activity, or event with no verbal (1993) compared the effectiveness of a linguis- antecedent stimuli. Williams and Greer found tic-based curriculum (Guess, Sailor, & Baer, that the students who learned to respond when 1976) and a verbal-behavior-based curriculum askedtodosodidnotrespondintheabsenceof (Greer,1986)ontheacquisitionofverbalskills. the verbal stimulus. In contrast, the children who received the verbal-behavior-based curric- We thank Ana Pastor Sanz for her help in conducting ulum were able to acquire verbal operants such sessions. A document detailing the procedure and data- asmandsandtactswithoutaverbalpromptand collectionprotocolwiththestimuliinSpanishisavailable fromthefirst author. maintained and generalized the skills. Parting- Address correspondence to Gladys Williams, Appl- ton,Sundberg,Newhouse,andSpengler(1994) ied Behavioral Consultant Services Inc., 66 Re- observedthatusing theprompt‘‘What isthat?’’ gency Circle, Englewood, New Jersey 07631 (e-mail: [email protected]), or to Luis A. Pe´rez- interfered with the establishment of nonverbal Gonza´lez, Departamento de Psicolog´ıa, University of stimulus control, because the question, instead Oviedo, Plaza Feijoo s/n, Oviedo 33003, Asturias, Spain of the nonverbal stimulus, controlled the (e-mail: [email protected]) doi:10.1901/jaba.2006.175-04 participant’s responding. Thereafter, they dem- 233 234 GLADYS WILLIAMS et al. onstrated that teaching the child to respond Sessions were conducted in each child’s therapy withouttheverbalpromptwaseffectivetobring room at the school. her responding under control of the nonverbal stimulus. Also, Sundberg, Endicott, and Eigen- Procedure heer (2000) taught 2 children with autism who Eachchildaccuratelyrespondedtotheverbal failedtoemittactswhenasked‘‘Whatisthat?’’to antecedent, ‘‘What is she doing?’’ when pre- tact objects with an intraverbal prompt, ‘‘Sign sented with picture cards depicting the actions [name of object].’’ Subsequently, the children playing ball and sleeping. Thus, these actions responded correctly to the question ‘‘What is were selected as targets in this study. We that?’’ Results of these studies suggest that using evaluated the children’s responses in one verbalpromptingproceduresto establish tacting condition without the verbal antecedent, in can interfere with establishment of stimulus which the antecedent stimulus was just the control by the nonverbal antecedent stimulus presence of the person performing the action, itself (i.e., the object alone). Thus, procedures and in another condition with the verbal that require responding in the absence of verbal antecedent stimulus, ‘‘What is she doing?’’ prompting may facilitate acquisition of tacts. Children received nonverbal, verbal, or The effects of teaching without verbal mixedtests.Inthenonverbaltests,theyreceived antecedents on acquisition of generalized tact- 10 trials without the verbal antecedent; five ing repertoires (i.e., ability to tact objects or trials were with the action playing ball and five actions in the absence of verbal antecedent trials were with the action sleeping, randomly stimuli) remains untested. Thus, the purpose of interspersed.Theteachersatnexttothechildby the present intervention was to further evaluate the table. The child’s usual teacher performed procedures to teach tacting actions on respond- the actions (the ‘‘actor’’). For the action playing ing in the absence of verbal antecedent stimuli ball, the actor entered the room, bouncing and and to assess the conditions that promote throwing a ball, for a period of 15 s. For the generalization across actions. action of sleeping, the actor sat by the table in front of the student, placed her arms and head on top of the table, and made exaggerated METHOD sleeping sounds for 15 s. The actor never Participants interacted with the child. The teacher waited The participants were 5 boys, Paco, Luis, for the child to tact the action. Responses that Jose, Carlos, and Juan (9, 7, 9, 8, and 9 years included the name of the actor and the old, respectively), and Rosa, a 10-year-old girl. appropriate action were defined as correct. Paco, Carlos, Juan, and Rosa had been di- Correct responses were followed by expressions agnosed with autism, and Jose and Luis had such as ‘‘Yes, you are right; Ana is playing ball’’ beendiagnosedwithAsperger’ssyndrome.They and delivery of a token. Incorrect responses attended a special needs school in Cordoba, were ignored. The verbal test was identical to Spain, and received an average of 20 hr per the nonverbal test, except that the teacher said, month of afterschool behavioral teaching in ‘‘What is she doing?’’ in all trials. In the mixed Spanish. They had a good echoic repertoire in tests, children received 10 trials: five trials with that they could repeat phrases and sentences in theactionplayingballandtheverbalantecedent aclear manner.Theymanded(requested)items randomly interspersed with five trials with the using full sentences, and tacted (labeled) most action sleeping without the verbal antecedent. actions in pictures when asked, ‘‘What is he or Following initial nonverbal and mixed tests, shedoing?’’ Theydidnot, however,tactactions 3childrenlearnedtotacttheactionsleepingand or events unless they were prompted to do so. 3childrenlearnedtotacttheactionplayingball. GENERALIZATION OF TACTS 235 For teaching sleeping, the actor walked into the Paco,Luis,andJoselearnedtotacttheaction room and pretended to sleep with her head and of sleeping in the absence of a verbal antecedent arms on the table, in front of the child, for in 63, 25, and 32 trials, respectively. Paco a period of 15 s. The teacher said, ‘‘[name of responded incorrectly to the first 14 responses the actor] is sleeping’’ as an echoic prompt. without the prompt; he imitated the actor in When the child repeated the statement clearly, fourofthefirstfivetrialsandremainedsilentin the teacher acknowledged the child’s response the rest. Jose remained silent in the first nine (e.g., ‘‘Yes, you are right; Ana is sleeping’’), and responses without the prompt. Luis learned gave a token to the child. After two consecutive with only one error. After responding correctly correct responses with the echoic prompt, the in 10 consecutive trials, Paco, Luis, and Jose teacher faded the echoic prompt by presenting received the nonverbal and the mixed tests a portion of the response (e.g., ‘‘Ana is ...’’). again.PacoandLuistactedtheactionofplaying Aftertwoconsecutivecorrectresponseswiththe ball when the verbal antecedent was absent; faded echoic prompt, the teacher stopped Jose, however, did not tact the action in the presenting the echoic prompt. From this point nonverbal condition. When the verbal anteced- on,thechildhad15 storespondindependently ent was presented, the 3 children tacted the to the presence of the actor performing. If the action in all five opportunities. Therefore, after childmade three consecutive errors at the faded being taught to tact the action of sleeping in the prompt or independent levels (e.g., he or she absence of a verbal antecedent stimulus, Paco did not say anything or made an incorrect and Luis performed the tact of playing ball in response), the teacher returned to the previous the absence of a verbal antecedent. These echoicpromptlevelandrepeatedtheprocedure. performances suggest that for tacting an action Criterion was achieved when the child com- in the absence of the verbal stimulus it may be pleted 10 consecutive correct responses with no necessary to learn to tact other actions in the prompts. The procedure to teach the action of absence of the verbal antecedent. It may be also playing ball was analogous to the procedure to possible that the necessary factor is learning to teach the action of sleeping. tactthatactioninthepresenceoftheantecedent Data collection and interobserver agreement. stimuli. Moreover, it is possible that the two The teacher and another observer recorded all factors together are necessary. responsesof4children.Interobserveragreement To analyze further the second factor, Carlos, was calculated by dividing the number of trials Juan,andRosalearnedtotacttheactionplaying with agreement by the total number of trials ball (instead of sleeping) without the verbal and multiplying the result by 100%. Interob- antecedent. Carlos andJuan learned in 105 and server agreement across children was 99%. 42 trials, respectively. Carlos remained silent in the first eight trials without the prompt; RESULTS AND DISCUSSION thereafter, he increased correct responding. All children initially received nonverbal and Juan remained silent in the first 14 trials mixedtests(seeFigure 1).Theydidnottactthe without the prompt, and made the remaining actionsunderthenonverbalcondition,butthey responses correctly. Rosa learned in 14 trials, tacted from two to five times in five opportu- with no errors. Carlos’ and Juan’s errors in nities the action of playing ball that was learning consisted mainly of omissions that presented with the antecedent stimulus, ‘‘What occurred early during teaching and in the is she doing?’’ in the mixed test. These absence of the verbal prompt. These perfor- outcomes were consistent with performances mances indicate that probing an action (here, observed prior to the experiment. playing ball) in the presence of the verbal 236 GLADYS WILLIAMS et al. Figure1. Correctresponsesmadebytheparticipantsineachtest.Theuppergraphforeachparticipantshowscorrect responsesinthefivetrialswiththeactionplayingball,andthelowergraphshowscorrectresponsesinthefivetrialswith theaction sleeping. Teaching numbersindicate correct responses andtotaltrials. antecedent is not sufficient to establish tacting verbalantecedentisnotsufficientfortactingthe that action in the absence of the verbal other action in the absence of the verbal antecedent. antecedent. After reaching criterion, they received non- The effects of probing the action of sleeping verbal and mixed tests again. The 3 children with the verbal antecedent on tacting that tactedtheactionofplayingballinthenonverbal action in the absence of the verbal antecedent andverbalconditions(except forJuan,whodid were then probed. Carlos, Juan, and Rosa not respond correctly on two occasions). In received the verbal test followed by the non- contrast, the 3 children did not tact the action verbal test. The 3 children tacted the two of sleeping. Thus, they did not generalize the actions in all five trials of the conditions with repertoire of the learned tact to the untaught and without the verbal antecedent. action of sleeping. These results suggest that In conclusion, no child showed tacts of an learning to tact an action in the absence of the action in the absence of the verbal antecedent GENERALIZATION OF TACTS 237 until he or she had learned to tact another procedures, it is possible that other procedures action in the absence of the verbal antecedent also may produce similar outcomes. andhadexperiencedtrialsoftheactionwiththe verbal antecedent. Conversely, all children except Jose demonstrated generalized tacting REFERENCES following both experiences. Thus, the two Greer, R. D. (1986). Pilot version of a scripted curriculum factors appeared to be necessary for generalized for verbalbehavior.Unpublished manuscript. tacting across stimuli. Therefore, teachers who Guess, D., Sailor, W. S., & Baer, D. M. (1976). are interested in teaching children to tact A functional speech and language training program for actions in the absence of the verbal antecedent the severely handicapped. Lawrence, KS: H & H Enterprises. may teach them to tact actions with the verbal Krantz, P. J., & McClannahan, L. E. (1998). Social antecedent as well as to tact some actions interaction skills for children with autism: A script- without the verbal antecedent (in the natural fading procedure for beginning readers. Journal of Applied BehaviorAnalysis,31, 191–202. context). Partington, J. W., Sundberg, M. L., Newhouse, L., & The present study had limitations. For Spengler, S. M. (1994). Overcoming an autistic example,noprobeswereconductedtodetermine child’s failure to acquire a tact repertoire. Journal of directly whether probes with the verbal anteced- Applied BehaviorAnalysis,27, 733–734. Sundberg, M. L., Endicott, K., & Eigenheer, P. (2000). entweresufficienttoestablishrespondinginthe Using intraverbal prompts to establish tacts for absence of the verbal antecedent. Future inves- childrenwithautism.TheAnalysisofVerbalBehavior, tigations should conduct nonverbal probes 17,89–104. following initial probes with verbal antecedents. Williams, G., & Greer, R. D. (1993). A comparison of verbal-behaviorandlinguistic-communicationcurric- Inaddition,alternativeexperimentaldesignsand ula for training developmentally delayed adolescents the use of more actions would permit more to acquire and maintain vocal speech. Behaviorology, definitive conclusions about the factors involved 1,31–46. in the generalization. Finally, although the Received December 21, 2004 present study also showed that children can Final acceptanceJanuary 20, 2006 demonstrategeneralizedtactingusingthecurrent Action Editor,Richard Smith