Emergence of Symmetrical Intraverbals Facilitated by Learning Skills With the Intraverbal Responses

Learning Symmetrical Relations Facilitates Emergence of Intraverbals after Reading a Text: Effects on Reading Comprehension

We studied the effect of prior learning of symmetrical intraverbals on the emergence of complex intraverbals after reading a text. In Experiment 1, eighteen 7- and 8-year-old children read a text with sentences in which A and B stimuli and B and C stimuli were related (e.g., “The Alps” to “Mont Blanc,” and to “Falcon”). Thereafter, all ABC intraverbals (e.g., C–A—“Name the mountain range of the falcon”) were probed without reinforcement with written stimuli and written responses. In Condition 1, six children learned before intraverbals that relate the categories to the exemplars that served as stimuli in the text (e.g., “Name a mountain”—“Mont Blanc”—Exemplars) and learned intraverbals that relate the exemplars to the categories (e.g., “What is the Mont Blanc?”—“A mountain”—Categories.) In Conditions 2 and 3, 12 children did not learn Categories or neither Exemplars and Categories. All children in Condition 1 demonstrated the emergence of all ABC intraverbals, but not all children in Conditions 2–3 demonstrated emergence. Experiment 2 controlled that text presentations and teaching trials did not affect the results and replicated the effect. Therefore, learning simple discriminations symmetrical to one another facilitates further emergence with more complex discriminations—intraverbals—which evidence reading comprehension.

Emergent Relations between Discriminative Stimuli, Responses, and Consequences in Intraverbals

We explored the emergence of relations between stimuli learned as discriminative, responses, and consequences with intraverbals. In Experiment 1, five 9- and 10-year-old children learned intraverbals that related a country (A) with a city (B)—e.g., “Name a city of Switzerland”; “Davos”—and that country with a predator animal (C). Correct responses were followed by saying the name of a feature of the city (T) or saying an animal preyed by the predator (U), respectively. The emergence of BC and CB intraverbals that relate the cities and the predators and that of intraverbals that relate the specific consequences to the cities (T-B and U-B) and to the prey animals (T-C and U-C) was probed with no differential consequences. All five children demonstrated the emergence of BC, CB, U-B, and U-C and four children also demonstrated the emergence of T-B and T-C. In Experiment 2, a simpler procedure that controlled a possible extraneous factor, was used with seven 7- and 8-year old children and they also demonstrated emergence. Thus, the emergence of verbal relations with elements taught as discriminative stimuli, responses, and consequences was demonstrated.

Teaching a small foreign language vocabulary to children using tact and listener instruction with a prompt delay

This study consisted of a systematic replication of previous research examining the effects of tact and listener instruction on the emergence of native-to-foreign (NF) and foreign-to-native (FN) intraverbals in children who had experienced difficulties learning to read and write. We assigned different sets of stimuli to tact and listener conditions, and taught 4 children to tact or respond as listeners in a foreign language using a progressive prompt delay with differential reinforcement. All participants mastered tacts and listener responses in the foreign language. For all participants, tact instruction yielded greater emergence of intraverbals compared to listener instruction. Tact instruction also produced all possible bidirectional (NF and FN) intraverbals relations for 3 of 4 participants, but listener instruction never resulted in the emergence of all possible relations. These results replicate previous findings suggesting that tact instruction is a more efficient way to teach a foreign language and extend them to progressive prompt-delay procedures.