Resources and time are too scarce to be wasted on treatments that have not been shown to be effective. The Early Years Even before your child can talk to you, what, how often, and how much you say to your child can have a profound impact on their language and learning abilities later. Researchers at the University of Iowa have found that the number and quality of the words a child hears in the early years of life have a tremendous impact on the fundamental circuits in the human brain. A child's vocabulary development is closely tied to their early language experiences and to their ability to think rationally, solve problems, and reason abstractly. In behavior analysis, we study verbal behavior because we're interested in what we do with words.
Words come in many forms.
For example, they can be spoken or written or signed. We regard all of these forms as kinds of verbal behavior. We live in the midst of words, so it's hard to think about words as behavior. When we see words on a page, we're usually not reminded that they are records of someone's writing. The program conveyed the wrong message to parents and others who are trying to get the best education available for their children with autism.