Decreasing Inappropriate Vocalizations through a

Verbal Model

Chanie Goldberg Gili Rechany

Shema Kolainu-Hear Our Voices

October 14,2004

Functional Communication Literature

Function of Academic Responses Establishing Operations

Carr & Durand, 1985 Reducing Behavior Problems Through

Functional Communication Training Schreibman & Carr, 1978

Elimination of echolalic responding to questions through the training of generalized verbal response.

Current Investigation Our Problem:

Emittance of inappropriate vocalizations during individualized instruction.

Socially inappropriate behavior.

Objective: Functional communication training

through a verbal behavior model.

Procedure DV: Total number of inappropriate

vocalizations emitted by the student. IV:Intraverbal Training- “Verbal behavior

under the control of other verbal behavior (Greer, 2002).”

Baseline: Classroom Ratio 6:1:4 Data collected between the hours of 8:30-10:30,

during individualized instruction. Mechanical counter utilized to record inappropriate

vocalizations throughout ten-minute sessions.

Procedure Intervention:

Intraverbal Training• Academic programs• 20 Learn Units • Feature and Class

Example:• Baseline- “Point to red”• Intervention- “The apple is ______”

ResultsDecreasing inappropriate vocalizations through a verbal behavior model

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Sessions

Inap

prop

riat

e vo

caliz

atio

ns (1

0 m

inut

e se

ssio

ns)

Discussion/Conclusion Intraverbal training was an effective tactic

in decreasing inappropriate vocalizations. What we learned:

Intraverbal training should be generalized to other settings to maintain results.

Time sampling should be taken throughout the day.

Current level of performance Intraverbal training will be implemented

across multiple settings.