B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior Intervention?

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Verbal Behavior Intervention was first introduced by behaviorist B.F. Skinner. Skinner studied operant conditioning, which means behaviors that are reinforced will continue to occur. Skinner used this idea to develop the Verbal Behavior Intervention. He believes that the individual will be motivated to learn and use language by connecting the word to its purpose. It can be taught to both young and old individuals with autism who have language delays. His theory places communication on six different verbal operants. The individual learns that different words will help obtain what the speaker wants. They learn how to use language to make requests and share ideas. Verbal Behavior Intervention focuses on four different functions. There are six …show more content…

The different verbal operants are used to elicit language development. This makes verbal behavior an applied concept, as verbal behavior works to help individuals with autism be able to communicate. For consistent growth verbal behavior sessions should happen daily. With verbal behavior it is crucial to have consistency not only with occurrence but with procedures too. As a child progresses through targets the teacher or therapist will collect daily data. This data will be analyzed to make sure notable change is occurring. This also leads to the teacher being able to decide what is the most appropriate and important skill for that individual to learn to be able to play it to life. Carbone (2013) suggests that children with autism often struggle with social skills due to the fact that social attention is not a strong reinforcer. Through verbal behavior we can teach individuals to request that attention and be rewarded for it, making that social seeking behavior more likely, in turn improving the quality of their life. “In shaping the mediator's actions, the verbal community plays the central role in verbal behavior. The verbal community: (1) teaches the required verbal forms; as Skinner (1957) puts it, “the form is eventually determined by the community—that is, it becomes conventional” (p. 468); (2) shapes the mediating actions that consequent them; (3) specifies the conditions under which …show more content…

The West Chester Library database was used to collect studies. The terms searched were “verbal behavior”, “autism”, “tact”, “mand”, “echoic”, and “intraverbal”. The search results were limited to studies conducted within 10 years of 2017. This timeframe was chosen in order to include studies not covered in past reviews and to highlight the increasing contributions of recent research to this field. In order to identify relevant studies potentially missed by electronic search, ancestry searches through the reference lists of studies meeting inclusion criteria were conducted. Thirty-six articles resulting from this search were reviewed for potential inclusion in the

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