The effect of tact training on emergent intraverbal responses for the children with autism spectrum disorders

In this study, the focus is both estimating the effectiveness of teaching response to non-verbal stimulus and the effect of teaching response to non-verbal stimulus on emerging response to verbal stimulus for the children with autism spectrum disorder. Furthermore, this study has tried to point out whether the target behavior is significant, the target behavior is suitable to teach the sample group (students)'s ages and the target behavior can be used as appropriate for context or not. In addition to this, social validity has been established by collecting the families' and teachers' opinions on the significancy of teaching reaction to non-verbal stimulus and its practicability. The sample group is consist of 4 male children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Their ages vary from 4 to 6. In this study, multiple probe design with probe design among experimental subjects has been used as an single subject experimental design. The study's effectiveness results has been analyzed by using visual analysis method. The social validity data collected from the families and the teachers has been analyzed by using descriptive analysis method. Two different types of reliability data-reliability among the observers and reliability of intervention- has been collected and analyzed. The study's effectiveness result not only shows teaching response to non-verbal stimulus to the children with ASD is an effective method but also demonstrate the target behavior has been maintained by the students at the end of 1., 2., and 4. Weeks. As well, the target behavior has been generalized to different tools. To sum up, this study's results show that teaching reaction to non-verbal stimulus has effect on emerging response to verbal stimulus. Parents and teachers stated positive opinions about the study. Furthermore, the meaningful reliability results related to both reliability among observers and intervention reliability have been obtained. Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorders, Verbal Behavior, Reaction to Non-verbal Stimulus, Reaction to Verbal Stimulus.