A comparison of tact interventions on emergent intraverbal responses in children with developmental disabilities.

Many individuals with developmental disorders experience communication deficits, including those with autism spectrum disorders. For some, this includes the underdevelopment of an intraverbal repertoire. A review of the existing literature on tact to intraverbal training showed a majority of the existing body of research has focused on transfer of stimulus procedures. A minority used tact training procedures. This study sought to compare tact training, transfer of tact stimulus, and transfer of echoic stimulus procedures to evaluate for efficiency. Two male children with autism spectrum disorder were taught to name items by category with the three procedures in an adapted alternating treatments design. Results showed that the most efficient prompting technique varied across learners. This confirms previous suggestions that prompting efficiency may vary because of learner idiosyncrasies or learner history. However, tact transfer of stimulus prompting was the most effective across participants