Luis Antonio Pérez-González, Lorena García-Asenjo, Gladys Williams, and
José Julio Carnerero. (2007)
Emergence of intraverbal antonyms in children with pervasive developmental disorder.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis,
40, 697-701.
In the type of intraverbal that consists of saying the opposite of a word, two
intraverbals are related to one another because the response form of each
intraverbal functions as part of a discriminative stimulus for the other (e.g., “cold”
in response to “name the opposite of hot,” and vice versa). Moreover, the contextual
cue “Name the opposite of—” is the same in the two intraverbals. The purpose of
the present research was to explore a procedure designed to promote emergence
of intraverbals of this type. Two children with pervasive developmental disorder
learned pairs of intraverbals. Thereafter, they were tested for emergence of
intraverbals with reversed stimulus–response functions. Results indicate that,
although the participants did not initially show emergence of intraverbals with
reversed stimulus–response functions, repeated cycles of probing and teaching
facilitated emergence of these relations.
DESCRIPTORS: intraverbals, derived relations, emergent relations, social interaction, social skills, autism