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| International Paper Session - Experimental Analysis of Verbal Behavior |
| Sunday, May 27, 2007 |
| 3:00 PM–4:20 PM |
| Elizabeth B |
| Area: VBC |
| Chair: Monika M. Suchowierska (Warsaw School of Social Psychology) |
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| Visual Abstraction in Discriminating Three Letter Words by Two- to Four-Year-Olds. |
| Domain: Applied Research |
| MONIKA M. SUCHOWIERSKA (Warsaw School of Social Psychology) |
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| Abstract: 23 children participated in two experiments investigating visual abstraction in discriminating printed consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words that differed only by one letter (the first one in Experiment 1 and the last one in Experiment 2). Matching-to-sample procedure was used and the children were required to select the printed word that was identical to the sample word. In both experiments, at the beginning, all children showed near perfect discrimination of individual letters, but they all made errors when whole word pairs were introduced. This indicated that children had difficulty abstracting an individual letter (first or last) of the CVC words despite their ability to discriminate when presented with single letters. The children were taught to match CVC word pairs. In both experiments, the training was successful in that its effects generalized to untrained word pairs. However, the generalization was mostly seen for the letter that was trained to be abstracted. That is, in Experiment 1, the children were trained to abstract the first letter and the largest degree of generalization occurred to untrained words that differed by the first letter (and the not middle one or the last one). In Experiment 2, similar results were achieved for the last letter. |
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| Evaluation and Teaching of “Yes/No” Responding Across Verbal Operants. |
| Domain: Applied Research |
| M. ALICE SHILLINGSBURG (The Marcus Institute), Melissa Ross Brown (The Marcus Institute), April N. Kisamore (The Marcus Institute), Michael E. Kelley (The Marcus Institute and Emory University) |
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| Abstract: Skinner (1957) described several verbal operants (e.g., mands, tacts, and intraverbals) and theorized that responses of similar topography may be functionally independent. Thus, acquisition of responses under conditions of one operant does not automatically result in usage under conditions of another. Research has investigated functional independence of responses and the clinical application of teaching responses across operants with mixed results. Previous research has supported Skinner’s assertion of functional independence (Lamarre & Holland, 1985; Hall & Sundberg, 1987), while other research reports a lack of transfer across operants (Nuzzolo-Gomez & Greer, 2004, Sigafoos, Reichle, & Doss, 1990; Twyman, 1996). Many studies have incorporated intervention for a variety of vocal responses such as prepositional phrases, abstract properties, and specific item names. The vocal responses ‘yes’ and ‘no’ have also been targeted for instruction in children with language deficits (Neef, Walters, & Egel, 1984). The purpose of this study was to examine the functional independence between topographically similar responses (i.e., ‘yes/no’) and generalization to items both within and across mand, tact, and intraverbal operants. Three children with developmental disabilities participated in the study. Results support the independence of ‘yes/no’ responses across operants and that generalization within operants was more likely to occur. |
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| Recombinative Generalization in the Context of Learning to Read. |
| Domain: Applied Research |
| MONIKA M. SUCHOWIERSKA (Warsaw School of Social Psychology) |
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| Abstract: Two typically-developing six-year olds and one child with autism of the same age participated in an experiment that investigated recombinative generalization in the context of learning to read. Recombinative generalization refers to correct responding to novel stimuli that comprise of known elements. Participants were taught to read 9 non-sensical words that originated from a 25 word matrix. The remaining 16 items were not taught and used to test for recombination. 25 words were arranged in sets, each with 3 words to be taught and a number of words to be tested. All three children could not read any of the words at the beginning of the experiment. At the end of the experiment, two typically developing children demonstrated recombination at the level of 70% correct answers. The child with autism did not read any of the untaught words. However, when he was tested for pointing to the untaught words, he identified over 90% of them correctly. |
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