The Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP) is an assessment tool used with individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and other language delays (Sundberg 2008). The milestones assessment section of the VB-MAPP is used to determine an individual's current skill level. The results of the milestones assessment can be used to identify instructional goals and objectives. The current study examined the effects of behavioral skills training (BST) on the administration of the milestones assessment by two educational professionals. The BST intervention resulted in immediate increases in performance for both participants.Keywords Behavioral skills training . Staff training .
Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement ProgramThe Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP) is a five-component program designed to measure verbal behavior, guide individualized instruction needed to address deficits in verbal behavior, and evaluate progress over the course of a treatment program (Sundberg 2008). The assessment is used to evaluate performance on Skinner's (1957) verbal operants across a number of tasks. The milestones assessment is divided into three developmental levels (0-18, 18-30, and 30-48 months), based on the attainment of developmental milestones by typically developing children. The current study focused on levels 1 and 2 of the milestones assessment of the VB-MAPP only. Level 1 of the assessment includes the evaluation of early mand, tact, listener, social, visualperceptual and match-to-sample, independent play, motor imitation, and echoic skills, as well as spontaneous vocal behavior. Level 2 of the assessment includes continued evaluation of expanded level 1 skills (with the exception of spontaneous vocal behavior) as well as an evaluation of listener responding by function, feature, and class, intraverbals, classroom/group routines, and linguistic skills (see Sundberg 2008). Level 3 expands on the skills targeted in level 2 and assesses preacademic behaviors in reading, math, and writing. The VB-MAPP is a tool that can be used in a variety of settings with any number of clinical populations (Sundberg 2008). Many educational settings use the instrument to establish language goals and objectives for individuals with autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disabilities.As with all tools and protocols, the results of the VB-MAPP will only be meaningful if the assessment is conducted by professionals who are skilled in its Analysis Verbal Behav (2014) (Sundberg 2008). That is, administrators must be aware of the functional relationships between verbal behavior and the speaker's environment in order to correctly design the assessment environment and assess the verbal operants. Without an understanding of Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior, an individual may mistake one operant for another based on formal similarity. Table 1 provides examples of verbal operants in which the response topography, saying "train," is the s...
