Ababarriers5!20!09 Mark L Sundberg PHD Bcba

The VB-MAPP Barriers Assessment:
An Analysis of 24 Learning and Language

Barriers and Possible Intervention
Strategies
Mark L. Sundberg, Ph.D., BCBA-D

(www.marksundberg.com)
Assessment of a Child’s Needs
• A formal assessment and behavioral analysis is essential
for developing an intervention program
• Identify the operant level of the existing skills
• Compare those skills to those of a typically developing
child
• Identify the language, social, behavioral, and learning barriers
that are preventing more efficient learning
• The failure to conduct an appropriate assessment results in one
of the biggest problems in programs that serve children with
autism: An inappropriate curriculum
Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment
and Placement Program:
The VB-MAPP
• There are five components of the VB-MAPP
• The VB-MAPP: Milestones Assessment contains 170 verbal
behavior milestones across 3 developmental levels (0-18 months,
18-30 months, 30-48 months) and 16 different verbal operants and
related skills
• The VB MAPP: Barriers Assessment examines 24 common
learning and language barriers faced by children with autism
or other developmental disabilities
• The VB MAPP: Transition Assessment evaluates a child’s ability
to learn in a less restrictive educational environment across 18
different skills
Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment
and Placement Program:
The VB-MAPP
• The VB-MAPP: Skills Task Analysis and Tracking provides a
further breakdown of the 16 different skill areas in the form of
a checklist containing over 900 specific skills
• The VB-MAPP: Placement and IEP Goals provides
recommendations for program development for children based on
their VB-MAPP profiles, and their specific scores for each of the
170 milestones and the 24 Barriers. In addition, over 200 IEP
goals directly linked to the skills and barriers assessments, and the
verbal behavior intervention program are provided
The VB-MAPP Barriers
Assessment
• It is important to find out what a child can do (The VB-MAPP
Milestones Assessment), but it is also important to know what
he can’t do, and analyze why he can’t do it
• The VB-MAPP Barriers Assessment is a tool that is designed to
identify and score 24 different learning and language
acquisition barriers that may be affecting an individual child
• Once a specific barrier has been identified, a more detailed
descriptive and/or functional analysis of that problem is
required
• There are many ways that a verbal repertoire or related skill can
become defective or impaired, and an individualized analysis will
be necessary to determine what the nature of the problem is for a
specific child, and what intervention program might be appropriate
Assessment
• There are several different types of barriers that can affect learning
and language development
• Strong and persistent negative behaviors that impede teaching
and learning (e.g., tantrums, aggression, non-compliance)
• Verbal operants or related skills that are absent, weak, or in some
way impaired (e.g., echolalia, rote intraverbals, mands that are
really tacts)
• Social behavior and the speaker-listener dyad can also become
impaired for a variety of reasons (e.g., limited motivation for
social interaction, impaired mands, impaired listener skills)
Assessment
• Fundamental barriers to learning that must be analyzed and
ameliorated (e.g., the failure to generalize, weak motivators, prompt
dependency)
• Specific behaviors that can compete with learning (e.g.,
self- stimulation, hyperactive behavior, or sensory
defensiveness)
• Problems related to physical or biological barriers that must be
overcome or accounted for in some way (e.g., articulation or motor
imitation errors may be due to physical limitations, matching
errors may be due to visual limitations, or listener errors may be
related to hearing problems)
Assessment
• 24 Common Learning and Language Acquisition
Barriers
• Behavior problems
• Instructional control (escape/avoidance)
• Impaired mand
• Impaired tact
• Impaired motor imitation
• Impaired echoic (e.g., echolalia)
• Impaired matching-to-sample
• Impaired listener repertoires (e.g., LD, LRFFC)
Assessment
• Common Learning and Language Acquisition Barriers
• Impaired intraverbal
• Impaired social skills
• Prompt dependency, long latencies
• Scrolling responses
• Impaired scanning skills
• Failure to make conditional discriminations (CDs)
• Failure to generalize
• Weak or atypical MOs
Assessment
• Common Learning and Language Acquisition
Barriers
• Response requirements weakens the MO

• Reinforcer dependent
• Self-stimulation
• Articulation problems
• Obsessive-compulsive behavior
• Hyperactivity
• Failure to make eye contact
• Sensory defensiveness
Assessment
• Scoring the VB-MAPP Barriers Form
• Rate the child on the VB-MAPP Barriers Assessment Form using
a Likert-type scale of 0 to 4
• A score of 0 or 1 would indicate that there are no
significant barriers, and a formal intervention plan may not
be required
• A score of 2, 3, or 4 would indicate that there is a barrier that
probably should be addressed as part of the intervention
program
• For some children the immediate focus of the intervention
program should be on removing a particular barrier
• Common immediate barriers to remove involve instructional
control, behavior problems, an impaired mand, and prompt
Impaired Verbal Behavior
• A functional analysis of verbal behavior (Skinner, Chap 1)
• A behavioral analysis of words, phrases, and sentences emitted by
children and adults with language delays
• Same basic principles of behavior as nonverbal behavior
• What is the source of control?
• These sources of control will often reveal that what appears to be
a correct response in form is actually incorrect in function
• Might not be the same source of control observed in a typically
developing child (e.g., asking “What’s your name”)
• Each verbal operant can be susceptible to unwanted sources
of control
Impaired Verbal Behavior
• The behavior analyst must determine what the correct source of
control should be, and how that source can be established
• The functional analysis of verbal behavior is on-going
• The failure to conduct such an analysis may result in rote or
defective verbal repertoires that can become difficult to
change
• This is how behavior analysis is different, this is what we do
• The primary focus today will be on the verbal operants, but many
of the other barriers are directly related to impaired verbal
behavior and will be covered in the workshop (e.g., demand kills
the MO, scrolling, prompt dependency, failing to generalize, weak
conditional discrimination skills)
Analysis of an Impaired Mand
Repertoire
• A substantial number of children with autism have an absent,
weak, or impaired mand repertoire
• Many of these same children have extensive tact and
listener skills, as well as other elevated scores on the VB-
MAPP Milestones Assessment
• Often, under these circumstances it is not uncommon to see the
child engage in a tantrum or some other form of negative
behavior as a mand
Analysis of an Impaired Mand
Repertoire
• A word acquired under SD control may not automatically transfer
to MO control
• The distinction between SD and MO antecedent control is not
systematically incorporated into many of the popular language
assessment and intervention programs designed for children with
autism
• There are many potential causes of a defective mand repertoire
and a functional analysis is necessary to determine the cause for
an individual child
• Here are 50 possible causes of an impaired mand repertoire
• Most problems involve a combination of causes
Potential Causes of an Absent, Weak, or
Impaired Mand Repertoire
• Limited mand training and limited opportunities to mand

• Mands are not required to obtain specific reinforcement
• Mand training is not part of the child’s early language training
history
• Not enough manding trials and opportunities are provided
each day
• Response form problems, and failing to try augmentative
communication
• The target response form is too difficult for the child
• Shaping techniques are not used
• There is a limited availability of established imitative or
echoic responses
• Can’t establish differential response topographies
• Articulation cannot be understood by listeners
• When a child has no or limited vocal behavior, sign language or
PECS have not been tried
• Push for sentences too soon (e.g., “I want...please”)
• Impaired mands are established early

• Negative behavior functions as mands
• A single response topography functions as the mand (e.g.,
“more,” “please,” “this,” “mine,” “yes”)
• Inappropriate mands become established and become hard
to eliminate (e.g., “Cup” as the mand for all drinks)
• Motivation (MO) does not control the response form
Intervention Strategies for
Established Impaired
Mands
• START OVER
• Use a trained professional
• Use the strongest MOs
• Use sign language
• Target 1, then ASAP, 2 specific response topographies
• Use standard prompt and fade techniques
• Use DRI and extinction for existing negative mand
Potential Causes of an Impaired Mand
Repertoire and Intervention Strategies
• Mand curriculum problems

• Choosing the wrong words (signs or pictures) as the first mands to
teach
• The mand training curriculum is poorly sequenced
• Mand training does not move beyond tangibles and manipulatives
• Mands are not incorporated into daily functional verbal behavior
• A small group of mands has a strong history of reinforcement (e.g.,
candy, juice, skittles)
• MO Problems
• Relevant MOs are not identified
• There is no current MO in effect for the targeted item
• Satiation effects weaken the MO
• MOs are all too similar (e.g., food, toys)
• Free or cheap access to reinforcers is available without
manding
• The child has weak MOs in general
• The response requirement is too high and weakens the MO
(specific barrier)
• MO Problems (cont.)
• Self-stimulation or obsessive behaviors compete with other MOs
• Failing to capture and create MOs
• No variation in captured or created MOs
• Weak MOs for verbal information
• MOs for social and peer manding are weak, and intervention is not
provided
• MOs are too strong and the mand repertoire becomes too strong
• SD control (e.g., prompts) problems
• The response is prompt bound by physical, echoic, imitative,
or intraverbal discriminative stimuli
• A verbal stimulus acquires control and blocks MO control
• A nonverbal stimulus acquires control and blocks MO control
• A relevant nonverbal stimulus is faded too soon (before solid
MO control is established)
• Scrolling gets reinforced (specific barrier)
• Spontaneous mands are not fostered and never develop
• Manding does not come under the control of natural
contingencies
• Poor audience control
Intervention Strategies for
Mand Scrolling
• START OVER
• Use a trained professional
• Use the strongest MOs
• Establish two specific response topographies, then three, etc.
• Possibly use one response as a tact
• Echoic, imitation, & LDs won’t work as the second topography,
intraverbal responses with signs will (e.g., “sign book”)
• Use standard prompt and fade techniques
• Don’t fade out the object too soon (multiple control)
• Use DRI and extinction for existing negative mand
• Consequence problems
• Inappropriate manding is reinforced
• Specific reinforcement is not used
• Reinforcement is delayed
• Differential reinforcement with extinction is not systematically
used
• Manding is punished
• Manding persistence is not established via intermittent
reinforcement
• Generalization problems
• Mands only required and reinforced in a specific setting, time,
or with specific people
• MO generalization training is not provided
• Manding response generalization training is not provided
• Overgeneralization
An Analysis of an Impaired Tact
Repertoire
• The tact repertoire is less susceptible to becoming defective than
the mand or intraverbal, due in part to the nature of the
controlling variables for the tact
• Nonverbal stimulus control is more measurable and accessible, and
in general, much clearer than motivational control (mand), and
verbal stimulus control (intraverbal)
• It is often the case that the wrong nonverbal stimulus
acquires control of a tact
• For example, when teaching tacts related to verbs, the goal is that
the specific moving nonverbal stimulus evokes a specific response,
not the object related to the movement
An Analysis of an Impaired Tact
Repertoire
• Some children learn to emit a word that is a verb in form but not
in function, as in the response “drinking juice” when just shown a
cup, or “throwing ball” when shown a ball
• Similar problems can be observed in efforts to teach tacts related
to other parts of speech such as prepositions and adjectives
(e.g., “above” and “below”; “big” and “little”)
• Gone unchecked, these tacting errors can be difficult to change and
can become the source of other verbal problems later in training,
such as intraverbal rote responding
• There are many potential causes of a defective tact repertoire and
a behavioral analysis is necessary
• Here are 30 possible causes of an impaired tact repertoire
• Most problems involve a combination of causes
Potential Causes of an Absent or Weak Tact
• Limited tact training and other barriers
• Formal tact training has not been provided, but is necessary
• Not enough tact trials are provided each day
• Limited tacting in the natural environment
• Other barriers such as instructional control and behavior
problems dominate the educational day
• Response form problems
• The target response form is too difficult for the child
• Articulation is unintelligible by listeners
• Shaping techniques are not used
• There is a limited availability of established imitative or
echoic
responses
• Can’t establish differential response topographies
• Augmentative communication has not been tried
• Sentences and carrier phrases are overemphasized too soon
• Tact curriculum problems
• The general progression of tact development in typically
developing children is ignored, thus the curriculum is poorly
sequenced (e.g., adjectives before nouns are firmly established)
• Nonfunctional or irrelevant tacts targeted
• Single stimulus and single response tacts have been over
conditioned
• Limited training with multiple SDs and multiple response tacting
(e.g., noun-noun, noun-verb)
• Tacts are not transferred to other verbal operants (e.g., mands,
IVs)
• Failure to analyze complexities of tacts involving
prepositions, pronouns, adjectives, private events, social
• Stimulus control problems
• Tacting is prompt bound by echoic, imitative, or other SDs
• Scrolling through targeted tacts gets reinforced
• The wrong source of control is established (e.g., tacting verbs or
emotions from pictures)
• Metonymical tacts are established and reinforced (e.g., tacting
by function or association)
• Stimulus control problems
• Verbal plus nonverbal conditional discriminations (CDs) are not
established (e.g., verbal stimuli do not establish a feature of
nonverbal stimuli as an SD: as in IV-Tact CDs)
• No spontaneous tacting or tacting in the natural environment due
to additional variables present during formal training (e.g.,
CMO- Reflexive, contextual prompts)
• Tacting is not reinforced
• Tacting is punished
• Excessive or inappropriate tacting gets reinforced
• Tacting not reinforced by natural or automatic contingencies
• Intermittent reinforcement is not used to establish persistence
• Generalization training is not provided
• Stimulus classes are not established
• Response classes are not established
An Analysis of the VP-MTS
Repertoire
• Many children with autism do well on visual discrimination
tasks because they are usually easier than verbal tasks
• However, some children do not do well on these tasks, and a more
detailed analysis of the child and the task is required
• Visual skills, especially MTS, are often more complex than they
might appear
• MTS requires that a child attend to the sample stimulus, scan an
array of comparison stimuli, and select a matching item based on
some specific criteria (i.e., identical, non identical, arbitrary,
association, sequences, patterns, designs, and categories)
• These skills involve a conditional discrimination where the
first stimulus (the sample) should establish a second stimulus
as a discriminative stimulus (SD)
Potential Causes of an Absent or Weak VP-MTS
Repertoire and Intervention
Strategies
• Physical limitations
• Some type of vision impairment
• Poor muscle tone, fine motor control, or CP
• Limited VP-MTS training

• No formal training on visual discrimination tasks
• Instructional control and behavior problems dominate
• The child stims with materials
• VP-MTS curriculum problems
• The targeted visual tasks are out of developmental sequence
• No systematic progression to increasingly complex tasks
(e.g., steps are too small or too large, or nonexistent)
• No functional use of skills outside of teaching sessions (e.g.,
matching socks, arts & crafts)
• Conditional discrimination problems

• There is a failure to make conditional discriminations (two SDs and
two behaviors)
• The sample stimulus does not evoke scanning behavior
• The sample stimulus does not establish SD/S-delta relations in the
comparison array
Matching-to-Sample
Nonverbal SD1 + Array (SD2) Nonverbal Response
Sample Comparison
S SD S Select Ball
Matching-to-Sample:
A Conditional Discrimination
Nonverbal SD 1
(A R1
ball) scan
Nonverbal
Sample array
S S
S /S
D r
2
1 R2 Select ball Sr 2
Comparison
S S
• Comparison array problems
• There is a failure to scan visual arrays and comparisons efficiently
• Over conditioning with a small array (limited array variation)
• The task is too easy because the items in the comparison array are
very different from each other
• Limited training with large arrays and scenes
• Limited training with similar stimuli in the array
• Limited training with arrays in the natural environment (3D)
• Limited training with the combination of large arrays and similar
stimuli in scenes and in the natural environment
Identical Objects: Varied Array Size
Object Matching-to-Sample With

Varied Array Size
Array of 3 - Neat
100
Array of 3 - Neat
Array of 4 - Messy
80
Array of 6 - M essy
Percent Correct Matching
60
40 Array of 8 - M essy
20
Participant 4
0
1 2 3 4 5
Sets of Trials
Identical Pictures: Similar Stimuli
Identical Pictures: Array of Similar Stimuli
Array of 3 Array of 5
100
80
60
Percent Correct
Array of 7-8
40
Array of 10
Par ticipant 1
20
Array of 15
0
1 2 3 4 5
Se s s io n s
Identical Objects:
Similar Stimuli-Varied Array Size
Identical Objects: Similar

Stimuli Different Array Sizes
3-N 3-N 3 -N 4 -N 4-M 3 -N

1 00
80
3-N
N = N e a r Ar r a y
60 M = M e s s y Ar ra y
Percent Correct
40
6 -M
20
Part icipan t 1
6 -M
4-M 1 0- M 7-M 6 -M 4 -N
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Sets of Trials
• Impaired VP-MTS established early
• The child is prompt bound by position, body movement, eye
or pointing prompts, etc.
• Scrolling behavior gets reinforced
• There is a reinforcement history for position preference, or
specific response patterns
• A verbal consequence like “No” becomes an SD to pick another
item
• If reinforcement is not provided for first selection, the child
quickly selects another item
Strategies
An Analysis of the Listener
Repertoire
• The complexities of verbal stimulus control
• An early indication of impending language problems is that a
child does not appear to attend to others when they speak, or
“understand” what is said
• The behavior of the listener involves several repertoires
• 1) Necessary for a verbal episode
• “The behaviors of the speaker and listener taken together
compose what may be called the total verbal episode” (Skinner,
1957, p. 2)
• 2) The listener consequates the speaker’s behavior
• Mediates reinforcement (the definition of VB, p. 2)
• “The verbal community maintains the behavior of the speaker
with generalized reinforcement” (p. 151)
•
Repertoire
3) The listener functions as an SD and MO for verbal behavior
(The Audience, Chapter 7 in VB)
• “The listener, as an essential part of the situation in which verbal
behavior is observed, is... a discriminative stimulus” (p. 172)
• “This function is to be distinguished from the action of the
listener in reinforcing behavior” (p. 172)
• 4) The listener “takes additional action”
• “Verbal behavior would be pointless if a listener did nothing more
than reinforce the speaker for emitting it” (p. 151)
• “The action which a listener takes with respect to the verbal
response is often more important to the speaker than generalized
reinforcement” (p. 151)
Repertoire
• There are three types of action
• Nonverbal respondent behavior
• Nonverbal operant behavior
• Verbal behavior
The Different Action Taken by the Listener
• Nonverbal respondent behavior

• “Among the special effects of verbal behavior are the emotional
reactions of the listener” (p. 154)
• “If a verbal stimulus accompanies some state of affairs which is
the unconditioned or previously conditioned stimulus for an
emotional reaction the verbal stimulus eventually evokes this
reaction” (p. 154) (e.g., “snake” literary works, anger,
passio
Repertoire
• Nonverbal operant behavior (“Receptive language”)
• Listener compliance (e.g., “jump”)
• Listener discriminations (LDs) (e.g., “Touch the car.” “Where is
the number 5?”)
• Listener Responding by Function, Feature, and Class (LRFFC)
(e.g., “Can you find an animal?” “Which one do you eat
with?”)
• “These examples remind us of the fact that the behavior of the
listener is not essentially verbal. The listener reacts to a
verbal stimulus whether with conditioned reflexes or
discriminated operant behavior, as he reacts to any feature of
the environment” (p. 170)
Repertoire
• Verbal operant behavior
• “In many important instances the listener is also behaving at
the same time as a speaker” (p. 34)
• “An important fact about verbal behavior is that the speaker
and listener may reside within the same skin” (p. 163)
• “Some of the behavior of listening resembles the behavior of
speaking, particularly when the speaker ‘understands’ what
is said” (p. 11)
• Much of what is traditionally called “listening” is covert verbal
behavior, consisting of all the verbal operants (e.g., we can
covertly emit echoics, mands, tacts, intraverbals, autoclitics,
etc.)
Potential Causes of an Absent or Weak Listener
Strategies
• Physical limitations
• Some type of hearing impairment
• Limited listener training

• No formal training on listener skills
• The child stims with the materials
• Fails to participate in the verbal episode
• The speech of others does not function as an SD for attending
• The speech of others does not function as a conditioned reinforcer
• People are conditioned punishers (avoidance, loner)
• Social barriers present (separate barrier)
• Fails to consequate the speaker’s behavior

• Does not mediate reinforcement for the verbal behavior of others
(e.g., get things manded)
• Does not reinforce the verbal behavior of others (e.g., head
nods, attending)
• Fails to function as an SD and MO for verbal behavior

• The child has not become an SD for certain verbal behavior from
others (e.g., “Did you bring your game boy?”)
• The child’s presence and behavior does not establish MOs for
others
• Listener curriculum problems

• The general progression of listener development in typically
developing children is ignored, thus the curriculum is
poorly sequenced (e.g., teaching adjectives before nouns
are firmly established)
• Single stimulus and single response listener discriminations (LDs)
have been over conditioned
• Limited training with multiple SDs and multiple listener responses
• No systematic progression to increasingly complex tasks (e.g.,
steps are too small or too large, or nonexistent)
• Listener curriculum problems
• No functional use of skills outside of teaching sessions (e.g.,
all table top LDs)
• Failure to analyze complexities of LDs related to prepositions,
pronouns, adjectives, social behavior, etc.
• Listener skills are not related to other verbal operants (e.g.,
tacts, mands, intraverbals)
• No LRFFC training has been provided
• Conditional discrimination problems
• Failure to emit conditional discriminations across modalities
(a verbal and nonverbal SDs and two behaviors)
• Verbal stimuli do not evoke scanning behavior
• The verbal stimulus does not establish SD/S-delta relations in
the
comparison array
Listener Discriminations
Verbal SD1 + Array (SD2) Nonverbal Response
“Touch ball” +
S SD S Select Ball
Listener Discriminations (LD):
A Conditional Discrimination
Verbal SD1 R1 scan
(“Touch ball”)
Nonverbal
array
S S
SD /Sr Sr
2 R2 Select ball 2
1
S S
• Comparison array problems
• There is a failure to scan the comparisons arrays efficiently
• Over conditioning with a small array (limited array variation)
• The task is too easy because the items in the comparison array
are very different from each other
• Limited training with large arrays and scenes,
• Limited training with similar stimuli in the array
• Limited training with arrays in the natural environment (3D)
• Limited training with the combination of large arrays and similar
stimuli in scenes and in the natural environment
• Impaired listener behaviors established early
• The child is prompt bound by position, body movement, eye
or pointing prompts, etc.
• Scrolling behavior gets reinforced
• There is a reinforcement history for position preference, or
specific response patterns
• A verbal consequence like “No” becomes an SD to pick another
item
• If reinforcement is not provided for first selection, the child
quickly selects another item
Strategies
An Analysis of the Intraverbal
•
Repertoire
Verbal SDs are usually much more complicated than the nonverbal
SDs
• Verbal SDs usually contain multiple components, occurring in a
brief time frame
• Multiple words as SDs almost always involve verbal conditional
discriminations
• Vocal verbal stimuli are transitory, nonverbal stimuli tend to be
more static
• Attending to verbal SDs is often more laborious than attending to
nonverbal SDs
Repertoire
• Many words that are not clearly evoked by a corresponding
nonverbal stimulus (e.g., the, a, can’t, usually, if, its, for,
of, anyway, whatever) but form the VCDs
• IV responses are typically more complex than responses
associated with tacts
• The MLU of a tact tends to be much shorter than the MLU for an
intraverbal
• There is often only so much that can be said about a specific
nonverbal stimulus (e.g., the tact bike vs. IV story about a
bike)
• The tact response is often shaped to include only the salient
information
Repertoire
• Intraverbal behavior is most prone to becoming rote for children
with autism
• The task of directly teaching intraverbal behavior is
complicated and endless
• Early intraverbal training is pretty straight forward, but by 3-4
years of age, a typical child acquires 1000s of different
intraverbal relations
• Most adults have hundreds of thousands of different intraverbal
relations as a part of their verbal repertoires (e.g., newspaper,
books, the internet)
Repertoire
• Contact with these verbal stimuli can evoke numerous intraverbal
responses, such as discussions of the facts (e.g., global warming,
autism, SD vs. the MO)
• The number of different intraverbal relations far outnumbers the
number of different mands and tacts. The frequency of mands may
be greater than intraverbals, but often the mands are related to a
relatively small set of MOs
• Language would be simple “if a verbal repertoire was like
a passenger list on a ship or plane” (Skinner, 1957 p. 91)
Repertoire
• Many children with autism have a great deal of difficulty
acquiring meaningful intraverbal behavior. Some have acquired
100s of tacts and LDs, but fail to acquire more than a few simple
intraverbal relations
• Tacting, imitation, echoic, matching, LDs, textual, and
transcriptive have a degree of sameness that may come easier
for children with autism than intraverbal behavior
• Not only are the antecedents for these repertoires more
consistent and clearer, but also the response is frequently the
same (e.g., a spoon is usually “spoon,” 2 is always “two”)
•
Repertoire
Intraverbal relations, by their very nature, involve constantly
changing SDs and responses
• For example, a tree is always a tree for echoic, tacting, matching,
etc., but the discussion about trees can be comprised of
hundreds, if not thousands of different intraverbal relations
• Furthermore, the discussion about trees may never occur exactly
the same way each time
• However, this type of defective intraverbal behavior is not
uncommon for some high functioning individuals with autism, and
especially those with Aspergers
Potential Causes of an Absent or Weak Intraverbal
Strategies
• Limited intraverbal training

• No formal training on intraverbal skills
Potential Causes of an Impaired Intraverbal
• Intraverbal curriculum problems
• Training is provided, but it’s to early in the intervention program to
focus on intraverbals
• The general progression of intraverbal development in
typically developing children is ignored, thus the curriculum is
poorly sequenced
• The specific target responses are not in the child’s repertoire as
tacts, mands, LDs, or LRFFCs
• No systematic progression to increasingly complex tasks (e.g.,
steps are too small or too large, or random)
• Failure to analyze complexities of intraverbals related to
prepositions, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, social behavior, etc.
• Intraverbal curriculum problems
• The IV responses are broken from MOs and nonverbal SDs too soon
• Intraverbal chains are not established (self as a listener)
• Continued intraverbal training is provided in the absence of
the relevant nonverbal and MO context (e.g., listing words)
• No functional use of skills outside of teaching sessions
• No formal multiple tact plus intraverbal training (e.g., “What color
is the ball” vs. “What shape is the ball?”)
• Limited training with multiple intraverbal responses
• Intraverbal skills are not related to other verbal operants (e.g.,
tacts, mands, LDs, LRFFC)
• No LRFFC training has been provided
• Verbal conditional discrimination problems
• One verbal stimulus does not alter the evocative effect of a second
verbal stimulus
• The problem becomes worse with more than two critical stimuli,
however training continues on without fixing the problem
• Insufficient training on basic verbal conditional discriminations
• Nonverbal and cross-modalities CDs may be absent, weak, or
impaired
• The individual stimuli in the verbal antecedent do not have
stimulus
control over any verbal responses (e.g., “not”)
• Child does not attend to multiple verbal stimuli (early words are
S- deltas)
• Stimulus and motivational control problems
• The child’s echoic repertoire is too strong (echolalia)
• Specific verbal stimuli in the antecedent are too salient and block
the establishment of stimulus control by other words
• Nonverbal stimuli control the response form (tact prompt bound)
• MOs control response forms (strong IVs on favorite topics)
• Rote intraverbal response have been over conditioned
• Poor audience control
• The speaker is his own listener (self-talk)
• Impaired intraverbal behaviors established early
• Rote intraverbal responses have been firmly established due to
a conditioning history
• Out of context or irrelevant intraverbal training may establish
odd forms of IV behavior
• Automatic reinforcement may establish odd forms of intraverbal
behavior (“delayed echolalia”)
• Simple verbal stimuli and single verbal responses have been
over conditioned (e.g., opposites)
• Intraverbal scrolling behavior gets reinforced
• No automatic reinforcement for IV behavior
• Intermittent reinforcement procedures have not been used to
established persistence
• A punishment history for intraverbal behavior
• An extinction history for intraverbal behavior
• A reinforcement history for odd, inappropriate, or impaired
IV
behavior
• Failure to self-edit verbal behavior
• Sameness has been over conditioned in the tact, LD, and MTS,
and the inherent variation of verbal stimuli cause problems
• Verbal stimulus classes are not established
• Verbal response classes are not established
Thank You!
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Ababarriers5!20!09 Mark L Sundberg PHD Bcba

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The VB-MAPP Barriers Assessment:

An Analysis of 24 Learning and Language

Mark L. Sundberg, Ph.D., BCBA-D

• Response requirements weakens the MO

• Limited mand training and limited opportunities to mand

• Impaired mands are established early

• Mand curriculum problems

• Limited VP-MTS training

• Conditional discrimination problems

Object Matching-to-Sample With

Identical Pictures: Array of Similar Stimuli

Identical Objects: Similar

3-N 3-N 3 -N 4 -N 4-M 3 -N

• Nonverbal respondent behavior

• Limited listener training

• Fails to consequate the speaker’s behavior

• Fails to function as an SD and MO for verbal behavior

• Listener curriculum problems

• Limited intraverbal training

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