You don’t have to cross your fingers and just hope that a child with autism will become conversational. There are building blocks that you can teach that will help a child become more conversant and get them to be able to answer intraverbal questions. Since becoming a Board-Certified Behavior Analyst in 2003, I’ve learned how to quickly assess where a child’s language skills are at, and how to build on those skills to improve their ability to communicate.
B.F. Skinner’s book, Verbal Behavior, really lays out the groundwork for how language learning occurs and sets up the order in which we should teach language to children with autism. Mands, tacts, and echoics will occur first in language development, and intraverbals will come in later. But intraverbals are incredibly important because most of what we learn in life, whether it’s in school or just building relationships, revolve around the give and take of the “who, what, why, when, where” questions.
I think the VB-MAPP Intraverbal Subtest from Dr. Sundberg is the best way to assess kids quickly and then learn how to program for them. I demonstrate for you some of the pitfalls you’ll want to avoid when you give this assessment and share some of my tricks for giving the assessment to a child who struggles to sit still.
You’ll want to use caution when teaching intraverbal questions and answers to kids with autism because you don’t want to reinforce a script, rote or inflexible responses. The tutorial that I’ve provided here is a great beginning, and when you’re ready for the next step, I’d encourage you to check out my Verbal Behavior Bundle Courses.
You’ll Learn
Resources
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