I recently received a question from someone in my online community about why I recommend
Dr Mark Sundberg’s intraverbal subtests.
Intraverbals are a big part of teaching conversational skills, so this video is all about assessing
and teaching this important communication skill.
I'm Dr Mary Barbera, Autism Mom, board certified behavior analyst and bestselling author.
Each week I share some of my tips on turning autism around, so if you haven't subscribed
to my youtube channel you can do that now.
Today I'm sharing a small clip from a live Facebook question and answer session where
I answered why intraverbals are so important and gave examples to help you get started
today.
Why am I recommending the intraverbal sub test when I am not recommending tit for tat
programming and just to refresh anybody's mind, the intraverbal sub test is 8 groups.
It is a supplement to the VB MAPP.
It is in the intermediate course under assessment.
I recommend my assessment, this the intermediate intraverbal assessment and the self care checklist.
I recommend all 3 of those be done and I do want to tell you that even though we're not
sitting down with a table at the table for anything for Lucas for multiple years, like
we are not doing mixed VB for many years, potentially a decade like we are, we do not
sit down and drill and everything, but we still are programming for tacts and intraverbals.
For example, when he comes home from his day program, I ask him what work he, he did that
day.
Some days they don't have work and he does puzzles and other things like that.
For a while he was saying cylinders and his one to one thankfully comes home with him
for a few hours so I can look at her and say, did he do cylinders?
And so with him he was making errors.
He was over answering cylinders because that's really the job name that he knew best.
Knowing his history, I'm like, that's a tacting problem.
We need pictures of all the jobs and all the materials for the jobs because part of his
goal there is to request materials, request when he's out of a job.
So if he's doing stickers on cylinders and he runs out of stickers, he needs to know
the whole name of the job is called cylinders.
But he also needs to know the parts of the job are cylinders and and uh, stickers so
that when he's running out of stickers he can say, Ashley, I need stickers.
Then when he comes home and I say, what did you work on today or where did you go with
Ashley or any of those questions, those questions require an intraverbal response.
We are still teaching him tacts and we are still teaching him intraverbals and um, for
my one client Alex, who in, he's not in many videos, he's in the, uh, I want to go to Outback
Steakhouse video.
I worked with him from sixth grade until he was 21.
And he used to work at the bakery at Weis and it was little muffins were like four across
and six down or something like that.
That was the, that was the deal.
And so we, we would teach him intraverbals, like without the muffins, not at the bakery.
We'd say okay, for little muffins.
How many across, how many down?
Four across, six down.
And then what about the big muffins?
Okay, four across, four down or three across, four down.
So there's always intraverbals as part of um communication.
And Lucas actually likes to do intraverbal webbing.
I mean we don't sit down and time and click, we're like walking in the park or the other
day.
Lucas, what color is it?
My husband said, Lucas, what color is your shirt?
He's like, purple.
And he's like, who else is purple?
He's like Barney.
And he got a big smile on his face.
So we are doing little webs throughout the day when we're on a walk.
Well what's in the sky and that sort of thing.
So it is much different programming from the time the child is one to five or six or eight.
We want to turn up the burners.
We want to get the child as high functioning as possible.
One of my past clients is going to college next week.
We want to get them wherever the highest functioning, highest independence level is, but for kids
at this moderate, severe level, they're, they’re older children, they're teens, they're adults.
It's not that I want you to give up hope, but I do want you to think about what is what
we should do now to give that child the best life, to give his family the best life, to
not be completely stressed every step of the way.
Kind of shift your hope and shift your focus to be.
My goal is be as independent as possible, as safe as possible, and as happy as possible.
That doesn't revolve around three tacts and two features and two functions.
Yes, he's, he's at a job.
His goal is to request more supplies.
Yes, we can teach him the names, but he needs, he needs pictures.
He needs a little drilling to learn the names of new jobs, to learn the names of new people,
to learn the names of new parts.
I hope you enjoyed this short snippet.
Wherever you're watching this, I'd love it if you would leave me a comment, give me a
thumbs up, share this video with others who may benefit, and for more information, you
can attend a free online workshop at marybarbera.com/workshop and I'll see you right here next week.