Jason Bourret, Timothy R. Vollmer, & John T. Rapp (2004).
Evaluation of a vocal mand assessment and vocal mand training procedures.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis,
37, 129-144.
A common deficiency in the verbal repertoires of individuals with autism
and related disorders is the absence of socially appropriate vocal mands.
The vocal mand repertoires of these individuals may be lacking in several
respects: (a) The individual might engage in no mands whatsoever, (b) the
mand might be topographically dissimilar to an appropriate response, (c)
the mand might be only partially topographically similar to an appropriate
response, and (d) the mand might occur only after prompting. Depending on
specific deficiencies in an individual's repertoire, different procedures
for establishing appropriate mands may be needed. The purpose of Study 1 was
to evaluate an assessment prior to teaching vocal mands for 3 individuals
with developmental disabilities. The assessment showed that 1 individual
displayed partial utterances of mands, 1 displayed vocal mands after mands
had been reinforced, and 1 displayed vocal mands when prompted. Thus, in
Study 2, a different teaching strategy was tested for each individual.
Results showed that the assessment information could be linked directly to
mand training for all 3 participants.
DESCRIPTORS: developmental disabilities, language, mands, response class