By: Michael Toto, M.S. Ed., BCBA, LBA-CT

In Applied Behavior Analysis and the teaching of communication skills, a tact (a word coined by B.F. Skinner in 1957) is when something is verbally labeled in response to something that is seen, heard, tasted, felt or smelled.  For example, a child may tact (or label) a horse if in the presence of a horse the child says, "horse." Tacts are learned through reinforcement. When encouraging and teaching language, we praise or give access to an item that is labeled correctly.

 Through incidental interactions with their environment, children will typically learn an array of tacts (Shaffer, 1995).  Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may acquire tacts at a lower rate and with greater difficulty of generalization (Sundberg & Partington, 1998).  Fortunately, discrete-trial instruction (DTI) has been instrumental in effectively teaching tacts to children with ASD (Partington, Sundberg, Newhouse, & Spengler, 1994).  A collection of research evaluating the effects of DTI on the acquisition of tacts has predominantly focused on teaching visual tacts.  Consequently, there has been a gap in research in teaching individuals to tact stimuli of other sensory modalities (e.g., teaching individuals to tact what they smell, touch, hear, and taste). 

Teaching children to tact olfactory stimuli can be instrumental in increasing important and appropriate behaviors. For example, consider the necessity of teaching children safety skills.  A child may recruit help upon smelling smoke. This would be beneficial over waiting until the child saw the smoke, which may entail a more dangerous situation.  From a social perspective, a child may smell pizza in the school cafeteria and say to their friend, “I can’t believe we’re having pizza today!” This is an example of an appropriate social exchange that could benefit children with ASD when developing friendships.

When teaching individuals how to tact stimuli that they taste (i.e. gustatory tacts) it is equally important to consider the safety implications.  Recognizing that milk is spoiled upon tasting it should evoke a response of putting the glass of milk down (or throwing the remaining milk away).  The taste of moldy bread should signal to anyone that the bread is no longer safe to consume.  

Additionally, our sense of hearing is continually being tested and applied each day.  The sound of emergency sirens prompts us to engage in a variety of behaviors (e.g. look around, identify a potentially dangerous situation and act accordingly, pull our car over to the side of the road, etc.).  What’s more, children hear verbal directions throughout their entire day, and their listener responding skills are key toward school readiness and success.  

Finally, some children are extremely fond of learning through touch.  Those kinesthetic learners are using their sense of touch to help expand their spatial reasoning, physical body awareness in relation to others, recognizing when an object is safe to touch, and to even develop their sense of abstract thought (e.g. closing their eyes to identifying an object through touch only).   

All things considered, research should help us determine which teaching procedures are as effective and efficient at teaching tacts of non-visual stimuli.  Learning from what we see is merely one modality of learning.  When developing a comprehensive program for young learners, let us not forget about the power and influence of teaching children across each of their senses.     

Sources:

Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal behavior (Ser. B.f. skinner reprint series). Copley.

Shafer, E. (1995). A review of interventions to teach a mand repertoire. The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 12(1), 53–66. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03392897

 Sundberg, M. L., & Partington, J. W. (1998). Teaching language to children with autism or other developmental disabilities (Version 7.2). AVB Press.

Partington, J. W., Sundberg, M. L., Newhouse, L., & Spengler, S. M. (1994). Overcoming an autistic child's failure to acquire a tact repertoire. Journal of applied behavior analysis, 27(4), 733–734. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1994.27-733.

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