Verbal Matrix®

Open the Verbal Matrix® and choose an item capable of being eaten. Select the function “eating” and show the learner the image. Ask the learner to show you devouring, snacking, gobbling, etc.

Verbal Behavior with the Verbal Matrix^®

The Verbal Matrix^® is an online database providing visual stimuli for applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy. It provides the BCBA, parent, teacher, or therapist with high-resolution images of common items in a child’s life. Parents and professionals have the ability to navigate through these tagged items quickly and easily. With more than 1000 cataloged items available, it has never been easier to help learners acquire language about the world around them.

Develop the Foundation of Fluent Conversational Skills Using the Verbal Matrix^®

Teaching verbal behavior is easier with a portable library of organized, relevant, modern images. Clinicians can select multiple exemplars by feature, function, and class (FFC). All images are accessibly diagrammed for BCBA^®s, therapists, and parents. We created the Verbal Matrix^® as an alternative to traditional ABA cards for many reasons, including:

• Physical cards are unhygienic; sanitizing them as recommended by the CDC will cause the cards to disintegrate.
• Cards take too long to sort and organize
• Traditional cards are heavy and difficult to transport
• Photos on traditional cards are dated and difficult to replace when lost

aba|tools Offers Superior Verbal Behavior Tools

Starting a conversation with your learner is easy when you have a library of student-friendly photographs with you at all times. What is that? A dog. What does it have? A tail. What can you do with a dog? Pet it. The Verbal Matrix^® makes these kinds of simple conversations accessible providing the foundational skills needed for more complex, fluent, meaningful dialog. Our robust tacting program offers the tools educators need in order to label associated features, functions, and classes.

What Are Intraverbals?

Intraverbals are the responses we give to others’ verbal behavior. When responding to the question “What says woof-woof?” the response, dog, is an intraverbal. To fill in a song lyric such as “Twinkle twinkle little…”, provide the answer to a yes/no question, or say your name when asked are all intraverbals. In order to gain fluency, or the ability to respond to an ever-changing conversation filled with intraverbal behavior, many factors need to be present, including the following:

• Accuracy
• Speed of response
• Variety of the response

It is one thing to ask “What are your parent’s names?” or “when is your birthday?” Those answers don’t change. Speed and accuracy are the only important considerations. If you were to change the task to “Name three animals,” and get the response “Dog, cat, bird” and those are the only three accurate and speedy responses the learner can state, those answers are scripted, not fluent. With aba|tools and the Verbal Matrix^® you can teach to fluency through more than 10,000 relationships with multiple image examples. This can help your learner avoid scripted, memorized, responses.

When using the Verbal Matrix^®, the adult may be required to point at parts of images, enlarge or isolate the image, or use a different example when using the assessment prompts. This would be no different than when using physical image cards or images from books. The acquisition of verbal behavior is meant to be interactive; your interactions with your learner are an essential component of ABA therapy. This should involve a back-and-forth conversation between you and your learner. At times you will hold the tablet out as you present a task; other times you will keep the image out of view and display new pictures as your learner states the item, only showing a picture when an error occurs. This can be done at a table, on the couch, in bed, in the car, or anywhere you have WiFi.