Nesrhten……….

Teaching language to children with autism and children with other language delays may be concentrated on establishing the basic verbal operants as mand, tact and intraverbals. And studies has showed that these verbal operants are independent. Especially useful in clinical practice is procedures that produce emergent verbal behavior – new verbal operants that are not directly trained.

Grow and Kodak has published an article describing some of the research done in this area, and pointing out future challenges for research and clinical practice in Journal of applied behavior analysis. According to the research done up to now it is possible to design interventions that produce emergent verbal operants – one topography can be used over operants without specific training. And that children are more likely to emit tacts after manned training, but less likely to engage in mands after training tacts.

Grow and Kodak especially points to Multiple-exemplar instruction (MEI) as one promising procedure that has been shown effective in producing emergent verbal operants. But they also encourage to explore the possibilities of stimulus control.

A inspirational article important for all dealing with language teaching and applied behavior analysis.