Determination of the effect of intraverbal instruction on intraverbal response in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

This study aimed to investigate the effect of verbal stimulus-response instruction on responses to reverse verbal stimuli in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A multiple-probe design across participants, one of the single-subject research methods, was used in the study. The participants were four children diagnosed with ASD, two girls and two boys, aged between five and six years. The first dependent variable in this study is the number of correct responses to the intraverbal stimuli taught. The second dependent variable is the number of correct verbal responses to the reverse verbal stimulus that was not directly taught. Additionally, it was assessed whether the non-targeted information stimulus was presented during instruction. The study's independent variable, verbal stimulus response teaching, was implemented using discrete trial teaching. Instruction sessions were conducted twice a day, two days a week, in a one-on-one training format. Five different emotional expressions (happy, sad, surprised, scared, and embarrassed) in response to a verbal stimulus were studied in the instruction sessions. The study's findings showed that intraverbal instruction is highly effective in teaching and maintaining children with autism spectrum disorder to respond to five different emotional expressions. This demonstrates that these acquired behaviors are highly effective in spontaneously generalizing to intraverbal stimuli without training. Furthermore, it was determined that these behaviors were maintained at a high rate in the follow-up sessions. The mothers of the participating children have highly positive views about the social validity of the research.