Teaching Intraverbals: How & When?

Intraverbal- A verbal operant first defined by BF Skinner in his book “Verbal Behavior”. An intraverbal is a type of language that involves explaining, discussing, or describing an item or situation that is not present, or not currently happening. Examples include: Answering the question “How old are you”, filling in the missing words “At the zoo last month, we saw some _____, _______, and a ______”, or singing songs “Sing the alphabet song”.

Intraverbals can often be quite challenging and time consuming programs to teach during ABA therapy. Even for therapists or parents who don’t know the verbal operants and aren’t sure what an “intraverbal” is, they usually want their child/client to perform a variety of intraverbal skills.

Common questions/complaints I get when a child lacks an intraverbal repertoire include:

“She only uses language to ask for things, she isn’t conversational”

“He can greet his teacher by name every morning when I take him to school, but if I just randomly ask him: What’s your teachers name? he won’t say anything”

“He can sing the entire Barney song (“I love you”) while watching the videos, but if I ask him to sing it during bath time he just looks at me”

“She doesn’t participate when we play The Question Game during dinner. We all take turns answering questions like “Name a pink animal”, “Sing your favorite song”, and “What should we have for dessert”. I know she’s verbal, why does she refuse to answer these questions?”

Teaching a child to mand (request) is extremely important, particularly when beginning an ABA program, because manding is how the child can communicate wants and needs to the outside world.

Unfortunately, in some ABA programs a child can get stuck at only using language to mand or tact (label). This would look like a child who only communicates with others to request ("popcorn please") or to label ("red car"). The child might spend their entire day manding and tacting, and to the parents and therapists there is no problem! The child is talking and communicating…clearly the ABA was effective. Eventually someone notices that when asked direct questions, the child won’t respond. Or when placed with peers, the child wanders away or just stares blankly at them. At that point, either the staff and family begin to think the ABA “isn’t working”, or the child is blamed for being difficult or stubborn and just choosing not to talk.

An ABA program should teach all components of language, not just the ability to request or label. Most conversation consists of a variety of intraverbals, and if you want your child/client to move past talking and really begin communicating, then intraverbals are the way to teach that.

So how and when do you teach intraverbals?

-         Work on building a strong repertoire of mands and tacts before introducing intraverbals.

-          Strong receptive skills can also help a child learn intraverbals, because you can begin teaching by having the child receptively describe an item (Give me the one that is a utensil), and then you can remove the tangible item and present the demand as an intraverbal (Name a utensil). Similarly, you can also transfer as mand or tact to an intraverbal response by first teaching the target response as a mand or tact with the item present, and then removing the item and teaching the target response as an intraverbal. You can bring the tangible item back out as a prompt, but you would then need to fade that prompt in order for the target response to be a true intraverbal. I tell this to therapists all the time: If you are holding up a card or object, you are not teaching an intraverbal.

-          Be sure to minimize student error. I would suggest using Errorless Teaching, where the child is not allowed to practice making errors. The therapist is quick to provide full prompts, and then fade out those prompts systematically. Especially with intraverbal programs, it isn’t uncommon to see escape behaviors to get out of the demand. Intraverbals are hard. Rote responding, studying the room, or looking at the therapists face will not reveal the answer to an intraverbal question. Understand the difficulty of intraverbal questions before you begin teaching them, and be prepared that you may need to use new and varied reinforcers, and effective prompting to help the child contact success and stay motivated.

-          Here are a few Do Nots: Do not begin teaching intraverbals too early, or at too high of a difficulty level. Do not completely avoid teaching intraverbals ...they're the building blocks of conversation. Do not begin teaching intraverbals before echolalia is under control. Otherwise, the child will just repeat your question or statement, and become frustrated when that isn’t the right answer.

-          The simplest types of intraverbals are usually songs, or fill- ins. This would include things like: “Ready, set, (go)”, “1, 2, (3)”, “A cow says (moo)”, “I love (you)”. You may be saying to yourself: Oh, my child already exhibits some of these fill -ins or my child can sing songs. That must mean they’re ready for  intraverbal programs! Not necessarily. With Autism, it is common that skills can present in a splintered fashion (the child can count up to 100 objects, but can’t rote count to 5 ). So this is why careful assessment of the child as well as looking closely at their programs is necessary before teaching intraverbals. When in doubt, seek the help of a qualified BCBA.

*Quick Tip:

Here is a list of some advanced intraverbal goals. Depending on the needs of your child/client, some, all, or none of these programs could be added into your current ABA program. Start simply... build up to complex:

Meow says a ____/Ribbit says a _______ (Reverse fill-ins)

Tell me something that flies in the sky, it’s an animal, and it says “chirp” or “tweet” (Intraverbal Feature Function Class)

Socks and ________/Knife, spoon and ______ (Associations)

You use a towel to _______ (Functions)

Where do you bake cookies?/What can you kick? (WH questions)

Is a banana a vegetable? (Yes-No questions)

Name something that does NOT have a tail. (Negation)