Acquisition of Tact Responses for Early Speakers with Autism Using Listener History and the Echoic-to-Tact Strategy: A Program Evaluation Study

Children with autism have demonstrated difficulty acquiring novel responses and often require repeated practice and high effort on the part of teachers to learn new language. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of different ways to teach. We carried out a program evaluation study using an applied behavior analytic approach to teaching participants to use new words. A single-case pre- and post-test research design was used to investigate the relationships between different early language skills in four 6-year-old boys with autism. Pictures of common items in two categories were identified for each of the participants: those items to which they could accurately point but couldn’t name and those items which they were unable to either point to or to name when asked. Participants were then taught to tact (name) all the pictures using an echoic-to-tact teaching procedure derived from verbal behaviour theory. This procedure required the participant to learn to echo the instructor’s word reliably before they had to use the word independently. Results indicate that all participants learned to tact pictures they could point to more quickly than those to which they could not point. The practical implications of these findings are that when children with autism are asked to learn to use new words, they will learn to say the ones they “understand” more quickly than the ones they don’t. When choosing targets to teach take into consideration the things that the child already knows and use that knowledge to build a bridge to new learning