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| Empirical and Conceptual Issues in Normally Developing Children’s Learning of Verbal Behaviour: Tact and Intraverbal |
| Sunday, May 24, 2009 |
| 3:30 PM–4:50 PM |
| North 127 |
| Area: VBC/TPC; Domain: Experimental Analysis |
| Chair: J. Carl Hughes (Bangor University) |
| Discussant: Greg Stikeleather (Palo Alto, California) |
| Abstract: In his book Verbal Behavior, Skinner (1957) described several different types of verbal operants. This symposium focuses on two: the tact and the intraverbal. Adema presents two studies with normally developing children involving tact training (e.g., exemplars of fish and fruits) and emergent listener behavior. The novel procedure for tact training in these studies is compared in effectiveness with a procedure in earlier tact training studies. Following this, Adema presents two studies involving training of intraverbal relations between lower-level category names and higher-level category names (e.g., “fish-animal”) and emergent higher-level listener behavior. Catania discusses how, via intraverbal behavior, verbal entities can be created that do not correspond to entities in our nonverbal environments. He explores examples of entities that were originally verbal and later became related to environmental events in the history of science. These verbal entities can create difficulties for the psychological sciences, and he discusses the implications for behavior analysis in particular. |
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| Tact Training and Emergent Listener Behavior. |
| MARLEEN T. ADEMA (Bangor University), J. Carl Hughes (Bangor University), Pauline Horne (Bangor University) |
| Abstract: The naming account of Horne and Lowe (1996) predicts that during tact training for novel stimuli children learn the corresponding listener behavior without this being explicitly taught. Two studies tested this with normally developing 3- to 4.5-year-old children. In the first study, the children were trained to tact (see alien-say name) eight different, newly designed, “alien” animals randomly allocated to four two-member common name categories (hib, feb, tor, and lup). The stimuli were presented four at a time, one from each category. There was also a training phase with mixed sets. After tact training, all 11 children who were tested showed the corresponding untrained listener behavior (hear /name/-select alien). The second study replicated the first, but included pre-training with familiar stimuli. Alien tact training now required fewer trials. All 12 children who were tested passed the listener behavior test. When compared with tact training involving pairwise presentation of stimuli (Lowe, Horne, Harris & Randle, 2002; Lowe, Horne, & Hughes, 2005), these studies show that presenting four stimuli at a time, and adding a phase with mixed sets, significantly reduces the number of trials needed to establish that the child can discriminate each stimulus from all others in the set. |
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| Intraverbal Training and Emergent Listener Behavior. |
| MARLEEN T. ADEMA (Bangor University), J. Carl Hughes (Bangor University), Pauline Horne (Bangor University) |
| Abstract: Skinner (1957) points out that intraverbals play an important role in the development of a verbal repertoire. The purpose of these studies was to see if higher-level category relations can be brought about by children learning intraverbal relations between lower-level category names (e.g., fish, fruit) and higher-level category names (e.g., animal, food). Normally developing 3- to 4.5-year-old children who had already learned to tact eight “alien” animals belonging to four two-member common name categories, took part in this follow-up study. This study linked the lower-level names (hib, feb, tor, and lup) to potential higher-level names (zaag and noom) in an echoic and intraverbal game. When tested, 5 out of 8 children showed correct listener behavior at the higher name level in Leg 1 of the study, and 3 out of 5 in Leg 2. A further study replicated this, but employed echoic and intraverbal pre-training with names of familiar stimuli before the alien word games. All 8 children who were tested showed correct listener behavior at the higher name level in Leg 1, while 3 out of 7 passed for Leg 2. The findings show that intraverbal naming may be one way to establish higher-level categorization. |
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| Are Meanings Hobbits?: The Reality of Verbal Entities. |
| A. CHARLES CATANIA (UMBC) |
| Abstract: Tacts are anchored in nonverbal environments, but intraverbals are anchored to verbal behavior itself. To the extent that units created as tacts can enter into intraverbal relations, verbal entities can be created that do not correspond to entities in our nonverbal environments. The different groundings are usually obvious in our distinctions between fiction and truth, but when created verbal entities enter into our science we must be alert to similar distinctions. The history of science has many examples of entities that began as verbal ones and later became more tightly related to environmental events (e.g., neutrons, synapses). Verbal entities can be useful, but in the behavioral and psychological sciences they have often created difficulties. We will explore the creation of verbal entities, their antecedents and consequences, and their bearing on behavior analysis and its applications. |
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