Echoic Responses Research Articles

Disrupting delayed matching-to-sample performance with varied distractor tasks

ABSTRACT Explanations of delayed stimulus control (e.g., delayed matching-to-sample, sequencing stimuli under the control of spoken instructions) and other instances of joint control often rely on “mediating” behavior, typically echoic responses occurring throughout the delay, to explain how stimuli no longer present can control behavior. While covert mediation itself cannot be observed, several researchers have looked at different procedures that disrupt potential performance by “blocking” presumed covert mediation by engaging in unrelated overt verbal behavior to tell us more about the nature of this putative mediation. In this study, preschool-aged children were taught to tact pictures of familiar objects and select them from an array of eight. During delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) trials, participants were required to either talk to the experimenter, look at distractor pictures, or match figures using a tangram toy. The type of “blocking” activity during the delay was manipulated in a test-retest multiple treatment design, and the resulting DMTS performance was compared. With some individual differences, the distractor task assumedly most incompatible with covert verbal rehearsal, a conversational interview, was the least disruptive to performance. These data suggest refraining from assuming performance reductions during “blocking” are caused by incompatibility with covert mediation.

Comparing the Effect of Echoic and Listener Responding in the Development of Complex Intraverbals.

This study aimed to compare the effects of echoic and listener responding in the emergence of complex intraverbal behavior in four children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Each participant was taught to provide an echoic response or a listener response for different discriminative stimuli for each condition. We used a nonconcurrent multiple probe design across participants and adapted an alternating treatment design to compare the effects between the two conditions. Pre- and posttests were used to evaluate the effects of the two different prompt types in the emergence of complex intraverbals. The results indicate that the echoic response was more effective than the listener response at increasing the emergence of complex intraverbal responses in three out of four participants.

Internet-of-Things Devices in Support of the Development of Echoic Skills among Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

A significant therapeutic challenge for people with disabilities is the development of verbal and echoic skills. Digital voice assistants (DVAs), such as Amazon’s Alexa, provide networked intelligence to billions of Internet-of-Things devices and have the potential to offer opportunities to people, such as those diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), to advance these necessary skills. Voice interfaces can enable children with ASD to practice such skills at home; however, it remains unclear whether DVAs can be as proficient as therapists in recognizing utterances by a developing speaker. We developed an Alexa-based skill called ASPECT to measure how well the DVA identified verbalization by autistic children. The participants, nine children diagnosed with ASD, each participated in 30 sessions focused on increasing vocalizations and echoic responses. Children interacted with ASPECT prompted by instructions from an Echo device. ASPECT was trained to recognize utterances and evaluate them as a therapist would—simultaneously, a therapist scored the child’s responses. The study identified no significant difference between how ASPECT and the therapists scored participants; this conclusion held even when subsetting participants by a pre-treatment echoic skill assessment score. This indicates considerable potential for providing a continuum of therapeutic opportunities and reinforcement outside of clinical settings.

Effects of blocking echoic responses on tact emergence following stimulus pairing

ABSTRACT We evaluated the effect of interfering with echoic responses during stimulus pairing on preschool-age children’s responses in tact probes. During stimulus pairing, children viewed presentations of national flags paired with the spoken names of the corresponding countries. In the echoic condition, participants were required to vocally repeat each name as it was presented. In the blocking condition, participants were required to perform the presumed incompatible response of labeling the color of the background on which the flag was presented. In a third condition, there was no response requirement. Emergent vocal tacting of flag stimuli was evaluated in probes. Four of five participants’ behavior during stimulus pairing was affected by the experimental manipulation, but tact emergence varied across participants and conditions and seemed unrelated to the manipulation. The results are congruent with other research on the functional role of the echoic in emergent tacting.

Emergent Tact Control Following Stimulus Pairing: Comparison of Procedural Variations.

We examined emergent tact control following stimulus pairing, using 2 different stimulus presentation arrangements. In the word-first condition, presentation of the auditory stimulus preceded the visual stimulus, and in the image-first condition, the visual stimulus preceded the auditory stimulus. Eight children (2-5 years old) participated. In Experiment 1, 4 children were exposed to 3 sessions in each condition with a new set of stimuli in each session. In Experiment 2, 2 of the same children received repeated exposure to the same stimulus sets. Experiment 3, with new participants, was identical to Experiment 1, except visual and auditory stimuli overlapped during the presentation. Postsession probes documented emergent stimulus control over 1 or more vocal responses for 7 of the 8 participants. Participants were more likely to make echoic responses with the visual stimulus present in the word-first condition; however, emergent tact control was unaffected by the order of the stimulus presentation. Additional research is needed on stimulus-pairing procedures and on the role of echoic responding in emergent tact control.

Echoic and non-echoic confirming affirmative responses in spoken Brazilian Portuguese

We describe the system of confirming affirmative responses in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) on the basis of a corpus of natural spoken dialogues between interlocutors that share a high degree of familiarity. While the BP response system has been characterized as an echo system (Sadock and Zwicky 1985), the unmarked option being a verb that echoes the verb in the antecedent utterance, our analysis reveals that this characterization only applies to polar question antecedents. Using inferential statistical modeling, we demonstrate that the echoicity of a verbal response crucially depends on the speech act of the antecedent. The use of echoic responses is more likely for antecedents in which the speaker displays a low degree of commitment to the truth of the utterance than for antecedents with a high degree of commitment. Our analysis also reveals that it is necessary to distinguish two specific verbal response types – é ‘is’ and tá ‘is’ – from other verbal responses. Whereas é has been conventionalized as a multi-purpose affirmation particle, tá is typically used to respond to orders or proposals, which is why é and tá are significantly less probable to be used as echoes than other verbal responses.

The Effects of an Auditory Matching iPad App on Three Preschoolers' Echoic and Listener Responses.

We investigated the effects of an auditory match-to-sample protocol on three preschoolers' accurate echoics to 100 English words and advanced listener responses. The protocol was presented by using an iPad app Sounds the same: an app to target listening and speaking clearly. We used a combination of a multiple probe design (for echoic responses) and a delayed multiple probe design (for advanced listener literacy responses) with a time-lagged baseline across participants to test the effectiveness of the protocol. The three participants ranged from 4 to 5years old and were all diagnosed as preschoolers with disabilities. They were taught to discriminate between positive and negative exemplars of progressively more difficult sounds, words, and phases by matching the sample stimulus to the matching exemplar. Our data show that the mastery of the intervention resulted in increases in the accuracy of the participants' articulation of their echoics, as well as their advanced listener repertoires as measured by the responses to spoken directions in the presence of visual distractors.

The role of joint control in selection responses

ABSTRACTThe term “manded selection responses” was used to describe a type of speaker–listener relation and a type of listener responding. The origin of manded selection response is the target of current investigation. Several behavioral models such as conditional discrimination, bi-directional relation, or naming had been used to explain the origin of this listener response. However, joint control studies demonstrated that tact, echoic, and selection responses are functionally independent. In addition, training tact and self-echoic jointly evokes manded selection responses.

The effects of an auditory match-to-sample procedure on listener literacy and echoic responses.

The effects of an auditory match-to-sample procedure on listener literacy and echoic responses.

Learning by Playing: Echo and Tact in Expanding the Verbal Repertoire of Infants

To refer to an object or event by providing its corresponding name is an important acquisition in the learning of verbal behavior. The relationship between the spoken name and its referent, called tact, is considered essential in the expansion of verbal repertoires in children. This study aimed to teach tact to four institutionalized children, aged between 26 and 29 months, with reduced exposure to verbal stimulation. The procedure introduced playful characteristics into the teaching of tact and the required repertoire, which was the emission of echoic responses, through procedures typically used to teach verbal repertoire for children with language delay. All children learned to tact (and echo). The procedure was effective in increasing the echoic repertoire and promoting the acquisition of the tact repertoire. These results confirm the literature that considers learning echoic repertoire to be a requirement for the acquisition of tact.

The Effects of Tutor Training on the Acquisition of Observational Learning and Improvement of Echoic Responses for Elementary School Students Diagnosed with ASD

The Effects of Tutor Training on the Acquisition of Observational Learning and Improvement of Echoic Responses for Elementary School Students Diagnosed with ASD

An Investigation of Stimulus Pairing and Listener Training to Establish Emergent Intraverbals in Children with Autism.

We examined two methods to facilitate the emergence of untaught intraverbal responses to children with autism. Listener behavior training (LT) involved reinforcement of a selection-based response following presentation of an array of pictures on an iPad® and an auditory instruction describing a characteristic of the picture. Stimulus pairing (SP) involved presentation of one picture in isolation on the iPad® and an auditory instruction describing a characteristic of the picture. Participants were not required to emit an overt vocal response during SP. Results indicate both procedures were effective at producing some untaught intraverbal responses, but a transfer of stimulus control procedure was required for two of the three participants to meet mastery criterion. Results are discussed in terms of necessary prerequisite skills for each procedure, and the requirement of an overt or echoic response to help facilitate the emergence of intraverbals.

Echoic and Self-Echoic Responses in Children

Eleven typically developing children were assessed on the accuracy of prompted self-echoic responses following a 5-s delay from their initial echoic response, replicating procedures in Esch, Esch, McCart, and Petursdottir (2010) that compared discrepancies between echoic and self-echoic scores of autistic and typically developing children following a 2-s delay. We compared the two studies in terms of age, level tested, and echoic/self-echoic discrepancy scores. Age and test level differences were found to be statistically significant. Results are discussed in terms of discrepant self-echoic performance and self-echoic rehearsal as it relates to participant age, test level, motivating variables, and the development of complex behavior.

A comparison of stimulus-stimulus pairing, standard echoic training, and control procedures on the vocal behavior of children with autism.

An alternating treatments design was employed to compare the effect of stimulus-stimulus pairing, standard echoic training, and a control condition on the vocal behavior of 3 preschoolers with autism. Data were recorded during pre- and postsession observations. During the stimulus-stimulus pairing condition, the experimenter's vocal model was paired with the delivery of a preferred item. During the standard echoic training condition, the experimenter presented a vocal model and delivered a preferred item contingent on an echoic response. During the control condition, the experimenter presented a vocal model and, after a 10-s delay, presented a preferred edible item. Results from the post-session observations during the stimulus-stimulus pairing condition showed an immediate but temporary increase in the target sound for 1 participant only. Implications and suggestions for future research are provided.

Generalized selection-based auditory matching and the emergence of the listener component of naming.

Abstract We tested the effects of teaching an auditory match to sample repertoire on the emergence of the listener half of the verbal developmental cusp of Naming for 2-preschool students with language-based disabilities. The study was conducted in special education CABAS[R] preschool. Neither of the students had selection or discrimination responses, the listener component of Naming, following mastery of match to sample programs for two-dimensional visual stimuli while hearing the tact as they matched. We taught the students to match same sounds and same words using BIGMac[R] buttons, and tested the effects of mastery of these skills on the emergence of the listener component of Naming. A time-lagged multiple probe design across students was employed to determine if there was functional relation between the acquisition of auditory matching and the emergence of the listener component of naming. The results showed that for these two students, the acquisition of an auditory matching repertoire was functionally related to the emergence of the listener component of Naming. We also report data on the participants' echoic responses to stimuli as well as emergent tact responses (the speaker component of Naming). Keywords: Observational learning, naming, contingency learning, & emotional and behavioral disorders. ********** The productivity of human language is an area of interest for many who research language development (Skinner, 1957; Chomsky, 1959; Pinker, 1999; Horne and Lowe 1998; Hayes, Barnes-Holmes & Roche 2001, Greer and Yuan, 2003, Speckman-Collins and Greer 2005, Lee-Park 2005.) Some linguists account for novel language production in terms of lexicon, lexical rules and an infinite number of combinations available to speaker (Pinker, 1999; Jackendoff, 2002.) Horne and Lowe's (1998) theory on Naming provides an operant explanation of productive verbal behavior. Naming is a circular relationship between classes of objects and events and the responses they occasion (Horne & Lowe, 1998, p.5.) According to the theory of Naming, speakers listen to their own speech. This orients the speaker back to the item of which they are speaking. This can be particular item or class of items in general. If the item or items evoke tact response from the speaker, the cycle may begin again. The individual can then hold the object in consciousness (Horne & Lowe, 1998, p.6) for as long as the cycle continues. Once an individual has an orienting response towards an item, or listener response, an echoic response may occur. Once listener and echoic response are in place, the conditions exist for the corresponding tact response (Horne & Lowe, 1998.) Once the listener response, the echoic response and the tact are in place, the Naming cycle is complete. Horne and Lowe (1998) claimed that Naming is the basic unit of verbal behavior, upon which all complexities of human language are founded. One experiment that tested the Naming theory showed that only 1 out of 5 children tacted items after being taught an echoic response not in the presence of the item and listener response, but 5 out of 5 children tacted items after being taught listener response and an echoic response in the presence of the item (Horne & Lowe, 1998). In other experiments, acquisition of Naming led to the emergence of discrimination responses to those stimuli (Horne & Lowe, 1998) and teaching tact response resulted in correct sorting behavior (Horne & Lowe, 1998) while teaching only listener response did not (Horne & Lowe, 1998). Another study showed that Naming in two to four year old children resulted in the establishment of arbitrary stimulus classes and that match to sample training resulted in categorization responses (Lowe, Horne, Harris & Randle, 2002). The emergence of Naming has been functionally linked to multiple exemplar instruction (Greer, Stolfi, Chavez-Brown and Rivera-Valdes, 2005. …

The role of different social reinforcement contingencies in inducing echoic tacts through motor imitation responding in children with severe language delays.

One of the major challenges that special educators are presented with when working with children with developmental disabilities is teaching vocal communication skills to nonvocal children. About 50% of children with autism do not display functional speech and they require intensive behavioral interventions to acquire an effective communication system (Whetherby & Prizant, 2000; Williams & Greer, 1993). Skinner in his book Verbal Behavior (1957) identified several verbal functions distinguished by the occasions in which they occur and the consequences they produce. The three verbal operants directly or indirectly related to this study are the echoic, the mand and the tact. Echoic verbal behavior is defined as the verbal response under the control of verbal stimuli that generates a sound pattern similar to that of the stimulus (Skinner, 1957). For example, after an adult says cat, a child responds, cat. The critical characteristic of echoic verbal behavior is the point-to-point correspondence between the verbal stimulus and the response, as well as the temporal relation between the stimulus and the response (later reproduction of overheard speech is not echoic behavior). Another critical characteristic is that the reinforcer for the tact is a generalized reinforcer that is typically social in nature (Greer & Ross, 2008). The mand is a verbal operant that specifies its reinforcer, under the functional control of relevant conditions of deprivation or aversive stimulation. For example, the response I want is evoked under conditions of deprivation from water and specifies to the listener that water will be an effective reinforcer. The tact is controlled by a nonverbal discriminative stimulus (an object, event or property of an object or event) and is reinforced by a non-specific generalized conditioned reinforcement, such as attention, praise or repetition of the response (Stafford, Sundberg & Braam, 1988). For example, a child says, airplane in the presence of an actual A listener consequates this response saying, that's right, it is an airplane. Skinner's (1957) theory of verbal behavior gave rise to empirical research that investigated the verbal operants he identified and led to the development of applied instructional tactics and curricula. Whetherby and Prizant (2000) described a shift from highly structured discrete trial training curricula (Lovaas, 1977) to contemporary applied behavioral analysis approaches, which incorporate the environmental variables that control verbal behavior on a moment-to-moment basis (i.e., deprivation, satiation, aversive stimulation conditions, generalized social reinforcement, stimulus control, history of the organism, natural context in which communication occurs) (Greer & Ross, 2008; Hall & Sundberg, 1987; Hart & Risely, 1974; Partington & Sundberg, 1998). However, one need not wait for naturally occurring conditions to evoke verbal operants, since recent work has shown that the motivating conditions can be designed, thus ensuring many more opportunities to acquire the verbal operants (Fiorile & Greer, 2007; Greer & Ross, 2008; Pistoljevic & Greer, 2006; Schauffler & Greer, 2006) Williams and Greer (1993) introduced the echoic to mand and the echoic to tact teaching operations for verbal behavior, where the student has to emit a certain number of echoic responses before being presented with opportunities for independent responses, mands or tacts. During the echoic to mand procedure, the therapist creates momentary deprivation states from preferred items, through a choice component (two preferred items are introduced at the same time). During the echoic to tact procedure, correct tacting of non-preferred items results in a generalized reinforcer (e.g., token or praise) and/or the opportunity to mand a preferred item. Establishing operations or motivative variables, such as deprivation, satiation or aversive stimulation play a critical role in the acquisition of mands (Michael, 1982; Michael, 1983; Michael, 2000; Skinner, 1957). …

Evaluating stimulus-stimulus pairing and direct reinforcement in the establishment of an echoic repertoire of children diagnosed with autism.

Many children with autism do not imitate adult vocalizations, an important skill in learning to talk. Pairing adult vocalizations with preferred stimuli has been shown to increase free-operant vocalizations but effects are temporary; thus, direct reinforcement may be necessary to establish durable vocal behaviors. In Experiment 1, directly reinforced echoic responses did not increase following stimulus-stimulus pairings in three children with autism. Similarly, pairings did not increase free-operant vocalizations in Experiment 2, a replication of Miguel et al. (2002). Experiment 3 demonstrated that shaping increased vowel frequency for one participant. Results suggest that variables are yet to be delineated that influence effectiveness of a stimulus-stimulus pairing procedure on vocalization frequency and acquisition of a verbal operant following such pairings.

Acquisition, Learning, or Development of Language? Skinner's “Verbal Behavior” Revisited

In 1957, Skinner, in his "Verbal Behavior", proposed an explanation on how a language is learned. In 1959, Chomsky strongly argued the non-learnability of language, establishing in the field of developmental psycholinguistics the substitution of the term "learning" for that of "acquisition". Currently, the constructivist models describe language acquisition as a process of ontogenetic, gradual, complex, and adaptive change. This new theoretical framework has been especially useful for rereading Verbal Behavior because it facilitates recovering the Skinnerian learning mechanisms. This can be observed in the recent research trends that recapture reinforcement and imitation (echoic responses), although they are now located in the initial phases of the process and are included in a cognitive dynamic that, by gradually increasing its complexity, can achieve grammar. The new constructivist theoretical framework, by retrieving the functional and referential aspects of language, can also take advantage of the classic Skinnerian proposal about the pragmatic types of verbal behavior, providing it with new meaning.

Inducing Vocal Verbal Behavior in Children with Severe Language Delays Through Rapid Motor Imitation Responding.

We conducted two experiments demonstrating the use of a rapid motor imitation sequence to evoke echoic and independent mands in three preschoolers with no vocal verbal behavior, who were unresponsive to alternative procedures. We further tested the procedure in the induction of echoics and independent tacts. The dependent variables for both experiments were echoics, mands, and tacts. In Experiment 1, we used a within subject multiple baseline design, across two mand and two tact forms, which were introduced in a counterbalanced order. In Experiment 2 we used a multiple baseline across subjects design with a tandem tact and mand training schedule, during which opportunities for echoic and independent mand training were contingent upon correct echoic and independent tact responses. Results showed that the rapid motor imitation antecedent was successful in inducing echoic and independent mands and tacts. Tacts required fewer opportunities than mands for mastery during the first experiment.

Informational and dialogue-coordinating functions of prosodic features of Japanese echoic responses

Echoic responses, which reuse portions of the texts uttered in the preceding turns, abound in dialogues, although semantically they contribute little new information. In this paper, we attempt to identify the informational and dialogue-coordinating functions of Japanese echoic responses while focusing on their prosodic and temporal features. Toward this goal, we conducted an observational study based on a corpus of spoken dialogues, as well as three complementary experiments, where particular prosodic/temporal features of echoic responses were studied in a controlled and focused manner. In combination, the two lines of analyses provide evidence that (1) echoic responses with different timings, intonations, pitches, and speeds signal different degrees in which the speakers have integrated the repeated information into their prior knowledge, and (2) owing to this informational function, the prosodic/temporal features of an echoic response also have the dialogue-coordinating function of directing the listener in how to handle the information just repeated.