Association for Behavior Analysis International

The presenter will outline the evidence on how children come to learn language incidentally (incidental naming). According to the evidence, children do not receive direct instruction/reinforcement to learn either the speaker or listener responses for word-object relations, despite speculation to the contrary. Nevertheless, typically developing children need and do acquire as many as 85,000 words. Research in verbal behavior development identified how this occurs and how to establish this capability in children who lack naming.The presenter willoutline the protocols to do so and how instruction should change following its establishment, along with why naming is an essential for inclusion.

Graduate students and practicing BCBAs.

We cannot teach effectively without defining what is learned. In The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching article (1954), B. F. Skinner outlined the relevance of behavior analysis to education. Learning occurs when contingencies change behavior; teaching consists of appropriately implementing those contingencies. Computers make powerful teaching machines feasible, but educational systems rarely avail themselves even of what was known when such technologies were severely limited. It follows from Skinner's analysis that what students do is what they learn, that teaching involves arranging stimuli that occasion relevant behavior, and that consequences must be contingent upon that behavior. Too often, educational systems focus on teacher rather than student behavior. Changing what teachers do by modifying curricula or media or even by allowing them to modify their teaching based on student feedback is inadequate if student behavior is neglected. Students are disadvantaged when teachers are expected to help them more, as when they are urged to provide more detailed lecture outlines when it would be better for students to do outlines themselves. These points lead to advice for both students and teachers, and are illustrated with examples from the teaching of behavior analysis within standard undergraduate course structures.