Abstract
This study examined the effects of intraverbal instruction with a fluency training component on the acquisition of divergent intraverbal responding and generalization to function, feature, and class (FFC) questions with two children (6 and 8 years old) diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The instructional targets were chosen based on a conceptual analysis of prerequisite relations that were likely to be sufficient for intraverbal emergence to occur. It was expected that with these prerequisites in place, direct teaching of a subset of divergent intraverbal responses might generalize across FFC questions. In baseline, participants emitted three or fewer intraverbal responses to most questions. Instruction with tact prompts and transfer-of-control trials initially produced only small increases in intraverbal responding, whereas the addition of fluency training quickly produced criterion-level performance. Further, both participants demonstrated generalization to untrained FFC questions. Pre- and post-tests revealed concomitant increases in responses to reverse intraverbal FFC questions and FFC questions presented in an intraverbal webbing format.