VB Community - Teaching to children with autism

Early and intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) has been firmly established and disseminated as one of the most
effective treatments for early childhood autism.

Recently, a number of practitioners have employed a variant of this
approach in which the language curriculum is organized and taught according to Skinner’s (1957) analysis of verbal
behavior.

In this commentary, we briefly describe the verbal-behavior approach to EIBI and summarize the existing
data that support its use.

Although the approach is conceptually sound and is supported by a modest literature on the acquisition of verbal operants, no outcome research currently exists to directly support the long-term application of the verbal-behavior approach to children with autism.

Thus, we outline three steps that clinicians and researchers can take to collect and publish outcome data on the verbal-behavior approach so that correspondence between dissemination and empirical evidence can be better coordinated.