The effects of daily intensive tact instruction on the emission of pure mands and tacts in non-instructional settings by three preschool children with developmental delays.

Abstract

Abstract We tested the effects of an intensive tact instruction procedure on the emission of verbal operants in non-instructional settings by three preschool students with developmental delays. The participants were selected because they emitted low numbers pure verbal operants in non-instructional settings throughout the school day. Specifically, we measured the number of pure mands and tacts emitted during probes in the non-instructional settings. During the intensive tact procedure, the participants received an additional 100 tacts above their average number of daily learn units. In a delayed multiple probe design, we found the intensive tact instruction was effective in increasing the number of pure mands and tacts emitted in the non-instructional settings by all three of the participants in the study. Keywords: Tacts, Mands, Learn units. ********** The development of a fluent speaker repertoire is critical for young children with language delays. Students with a fluent speaker repertoire use an extensive vocabulary across settings and overtime, extrapolate new vocabulary based on existing vocabulary and are reinforced naturally by communicative behavior (Hart & Risley, 1996). Furthermore, students who function as speakers can govern consequences in the presence of listeners in their environment by using another individual to mediate the contingencies (Greer, 2002). Deficits in the development of a speaker repertoire may be attributed to native or environmental factors. The latter was demonstrated by Hart & Risley (1995) who found a correlation between SES and vocabulary growth, where 3 year-old children from families categorized as low SES had acquired approximately half the vocabulary compared with children from higher SES or professional families. These findings were attributed to overall language interactions between parents and their children, in which parents of high SES used a vocabulary of over 2000 different words versus 1000 words used by parents of low SES. Additionally, the low SES children experienced infrequent opportunities for interactions, which placed these children at risk for failure in future languagelearning opportunities. Students present with deficits in their speaker repertoire often receive intense behavioral interventions provide opportunities for compensation. This instruction involves teaching the vocal operants-- mands and tacts. According to Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior (1957), mands and tacts are two of the functional relations in terms of their controlling antecedent and consequent events. Children typically learn tacts through direct instruction, naming or via observation if the student has an observational learning repertoire. The term tact, is derived from contact with one's own environment, and can represent aspects of an individuals' environment across all five senses: taste, smell, sound, touch and sight (Greer & Ross, 2006). More specifically, a tact is a vocal verbal operant is under non-verbal control and is reinforced by a generalized reinforcer (Skinner, 1957; Becker, 1989). In this case a generalized reinforcer would be the attention of another person. For example, a child may emit the tact with a vocal response car in the presence of an actual and the child's mother may respond that is a red car. In this case the mother's response functioned to reinforce the child's initial tact. This then increases the likelihood the child would emit further tacts in the future. Skinner (1957) differentiated between two different types of tacts; pure and intraverbal tacts, where an intraverbal or impure tact occurs under multiple controlling antecedents, which are both verbal and physical. At times during direct instruction students are required to emit impure tacts where the teacher points to a stimulus and as part of the antecedent and may ask What is it? Typically, children are learning the form and the correspondence between the stimulus and the word during instruction under the antecedent control of both a verbal stimulus and a nonverbal stimulus. …