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An Analysis of Verbal Stimulus Control in Intraverbal Behavior: Implications for Practice and Applied Research

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Abstract

A common characteristic of the language deficits experienced by children with autism (and other developmental disorders) is their failure to acquire a complex intraverbal repertoire. The difficulties with learning intraverbal behaviors may, in part, be related to the fact that the stimulus control for such behaviors usually involves highly complex verbal stimuli. The antecedent verbal control of intraverbal behavior may involve discriminative stimuli (i.e., discriminated operants), conditional stimulus control, and/or control by compound stimuli. Distinctions among these different types of antecedent control are presented, along with recommendations for intervention procedures that may facilitate the acquisition of intraverbal behavior.

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Correspondence to Svein Eikeseth.

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Portions of this paper were presented at the 38th Annual Convention for the Association for Behavior Analysis International, Seattle, WA, May 2012.

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Eikeseth, S., Smith, D.P. An Analysis of Verbal Stimulus Control in Intraverbal Behavior: Implications for Practice and Applied Research. Analysis Verbal Behav 29, 125–135 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03393130

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