Individuals who are pursuing their Board-Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) certification are required to have an effective understanding of applied behavior analysis (ABA) terminology. Hemwell (2020) used Equivalence Based Instruction (EBI) and Match-to-Sample (MTS) training to teach technical definitions of ABA terminology to first-year ABA students. Participants displayed limited emergent intraverbal responding and did not maintain emergent intraverbal responding. Hemwell (2020) speculated this was due to the length and complexity of the definitions. The current study was conducted to replicate and extend Hemwell (2020) to determine if using simplified definitions of ABA terminology was effective in promoting the acquisition, understanding, and maintenance of ABA terminology. Using a multiple probe across behaviors design replicated across participants, participants were exposed to 30 simplified ABA terms, along with definitions and examples via a MTS teaching method. Participants were assessed on their performance of untaught relations in a selection-based pre-post assessment, as well as through a written intraverbal probes. Despite text simplification, emergent intraverbal responding was variable and did not maintain for all terms. However, emergent selection-based responding across all relations from pre to post test was evident. In addition, following text simplification, participants displayed emergent selection based responding with more complex definitions from the Cooper et al. (2020) textbook. Overall, future instructors may consider the use of EBI and text simplification in their courses to teach ABA terminology, examples, and principles.
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