My goal at the time was to compare the emphasis, in each of these books, across verbal operants in the training programs that they described. In 1998 verbal behavior was still only a class of behaviors defined by mediation by others, the behavioral approach to language, and a book by B. F. Skinner. We had not yet seen the separation of groups of behavior analysts and approaches roughly identified with Lovaas approach, which would emphasize listener's skills first, and the verbal behavior approach, which would emphasize speaker's skills first. I might write one of these days about what I think of all this...
Anyhow, before this matter was relevant due to this differentiation in approaches, I was interested from a clinical perspective and the only way to compare the manuals in an objective way happened to be to transform every training program into its 3-term contingency according to the recommendations in the book.
My master's thesis was born and many of my questions answered. I have been working on extending this analysis to the more recent books and one day I might get there! For now, here are some results from the work with the older books, which are:
- The Me Book, by Ivar Lovaas
- Behavioral Intervention for Young Children With Autism: A Manual for Parents and Professionals, by Maurice, Green, and Luce
- A Work in Progress: Behavior Management Strategies & A Curriculum for Intensive Behavioral Treatment of Autism, by Leaf and McEachin
- Teaching language to children with autism or other developmental disabilities, by Sundberg and Partington,
Here is the general finding which, of course, depends among the most relevant variables, on how much the skills are broken down, but gives a good overall look of the emphasis across manuals.
