| Verbal Milestones: Listener | ||
| Metamorphosis status: Caterpillar | ||
| Cusp | Description | Protocol Procedure & Research |
| Auditory Matching | Generalized auditory MTS for speech. A verbal behavior cusp that enables one to discriminate between positive and negative auditory exemplars by matching the sample sound to the matching exemplar. Must be eliminated as source for faulty echoics. | Auditory Matching Protocol [47] [48] [49] |
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| New Learning Possibilities: Improves or eliminates faulty echoics and collateral effect may be enhancement of conditioned reinforcement for voices | |
| Listener Literacy (Phonemic stimulus control, or “phonemic awareness”) | A verbal behavior cusp that enables one to learn from spoken instructions with or without the presence of visual distractors | Listener Emersion [42] [50] [51] |
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| New Learning Possibilities: With the development of basic listener literacy, the child can learn word-object relations as a listener. The child no longer relies only on visual cues but responds to vowel-consonant control for listener responses (verbally governed behavior). Some research suggests that listener literacy is a foundational cusp for reading comprehension [3] . | |
| Verbal Milestones: Speaker | ||
| Metamorphosis status: Caterpillar-Chrysalis | ||
| Parroting | A verbal behavior cusp that enables one to emit point-to-point correspondence in vocal response and the reinforcement is correspondence and auditory feedback | Stimulus-stimulus pairing [52] [53] [54] [55] |
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| New Learning Possibilities: With parroting, one has the ready topography that creates possibility to induce functional mands and tacts by shifting the reinforcement | |
| Echoic-to-Mand | A verbal behavior cusp that enables one to emit point-to-point correspondence to other’s vocal stimulus when the specified object is the reinforcer as distinguished from parroting. First instances of speech as verbal behavior for contract reinforcement | Echoic-to-Mand [56] Rapid Motor Imitation Approach (RMIA) [57] [58] |
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| New Learning Possibilities: Echoic to mand establishes the cusp that leads to building a repertoire of mands where the reinforcer is specified for contact functions. | |
| Echoic-to-Tact | A verbal behavior cusp that enables one to emit point-to-point correspondence to other’s vocal stimulus in tacts where the reinforcement is social contact. | Echoic-to-Tact [56] Rapid Motor Imitation Approach (RMIA) [57] [58] Social reinforcement or contact reinforcers that distinguish tact contact reinforcement from contract reinforcement [59] [60] |
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| New Learning Possibilities: Echoic to tact is the beginning of social contact reinforcers and is necessary for more complex social reinforcement | |