Teaching Intraverbals
Teaching Intraverbals
Intraverbals are a key part of daily conversation and communication. Often times, professionals in the ABA field are missing vital teaching methods to help clients develop a complete Intraverbal repetoire.
Today, we want to give you the tools you need to help your learners achieve the most they possibly can.
Intraverbal Webbing; there’s two words you don’t hear every day. Whilst most ABA practitioners know how to teach basic Intraverbal skills, I have often found that most do not know how to teach advanced Intraverbal skills. Perhaps most importantly, there seems to be a lack of understanding in the ABA community of how to teach “real-life” Intraverbals and how to practically teach learners application of information and concepts rather than just responding for the sake of responding (aka rote responding).
An overly common issue I have observed are learners that have been taught to respond “fine” when asked the question, “how are you?” and consequently this is the only response they can provide when asked the question “how are you?” or “how you doing today?”
This underpins a fundamental issue with the team who have been programming for and teaching this learner and a lack of awareness of Verbal Behavior.
Whilst the learner may have been taught to respond with “fine” when asked how they are in varying manners (i.e., ‘how are you’ or ‘how you feeling’), the learner has likely not been taught a variety of responses and in all probability does not really understand the concept behind the question. As such, the learner has not been able to generalise other known responses when asked this question.
This links back to an understanding of B.F. Skinner’s analysis of multiple control in relation to Verbal Behavior. In 2011, Michael, Palmer & Sundberg coined two terms relating to the multiple control of language: convergent multiple control and divergent multiple control. In simple terms what we are talking about here is the idea that multiple [antecedent] words/statements could lead to the same response, or that one [antecedent] word/statement could lead to multiple responses. The former is convergent multiple control and the latter is divergent multiple control.
Let’s put it into this practical example. I could ask you:
- Tell me something you eat?
- Tell me something green?
- Tell me a fruit?
All of these questions could lead to the same response of “apple”. This is an example of convergent multiple control.
I could also ask you:
- Tell me something you eat?
And this could lead to a variety of responses such as “apple”, “bread” or “pizza”. This is an example of divergent multiple control. I’ve added a few handy images here to try to break this complex topic down visually as well.
So, the question now is ‘how does this all relate to Intraverbal webbing?’ The answer is everything. Intraverbal webbing is a teaching procedure we utilise in ABA to help a learner develop both convergent and divergent multiple control by teaching a variety of responses to a single questions whilst also teaching responses to variety of different questions. This helps a learner develop a greater awareness and understanding of advanced concepts and avoids scripted or rote responses. If the team programming a learner Intraverbal’s do not have a grasp of the multiple control of Verbal Behavior, it will likely lead to the development of scripted responding, such as in the earlier example of the learner only responding “fine” to the question “how are you?”
Below you will find a sample teaching protocol for Intraverbal webbing; be sure to use this within the scope of your learners abilities and under the supervision of your learners BCBA. Good luck!
