The Induction of Naming in Children with No Prior Tact Responses as a Function of Multiple Exemplar Histories of Instruction

Abstract

The phenomenon identified as naming is a key stage of language function that is missing in many children with autism and other language delay diagnoses. We identified four children with autism, who, prior to the implementation of this experiment, did not have the naming repertoire (either speaker to listener or listener to speaker) and who had no tact responses for two- or three-dimensional stimuli. Tact training alone did not result in a naming repertoire or echoic-to-tact responses for these students. We then provided multiple exemplar instruction (MEI) across speaker and listener repertoires for a subset of stimuli (the teaching set) that resulted in untaught response components of naming and the capability to acquire naming after learning tacts for subsequent sets of stimuli. We used a delayed multiple-baseline probe design with stimuli counterbalanced across participants. The results showed that for all four students, mastery of tacts alone (the baseline or initial training condition) was not sufficient for the naming or echoic-to-tact repertoires to emerge. Following MEI the naming repertoire emerged for all four students for the initial set of stimuli. In addition, we tested for naming with novel stimuli that were probed prior to the MEI and naming also emerged following tact instruction alone for these sets. The results are discussed in terms of the role of naming in the incidental acquisition of verbal functions as part of the speaker-as-own-listener repertoire.

A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do It

“…Thus, much of children's vocabulary is acquired incidentally. Current evidence (Fiorile & Greer, 2007;Greer, Stolfi, & Pistoljevic, 2007) supports the notion that the mechanisms for children's learning of words for things incidentally is, in fact, traceable to instructional histories and the ensuing stimulus control that lead to Naming as a, or the, source of incidental language learning.…”

“…The work we discuss has concentrated on the induction, or the bringing about, of Naming in children who are missing all or part of the speaker and listener components of Naming (see Table 1 for an overview of that literature). We characterize Naming as a higher order verbal operant that is one of several verbal behavioral developmental stages that have been identified experimentally in several studies (Fiorile & Greer, 2007;Gilic, 2005;Greer & Keohane, 2005Greer & Speckman, 2008;Greer, Yuan, & Gautreaux, 2005;Speckman-Collins, Park, & Greer, 2007). Naming emerged slowly over the year for many but not all participants.…”

“…First we identify several sets of stimuli the children can neither tact nor respond to as a listener, such as (a) obscure animals, gemstones, leaf types of trees (Greer, Stolfi et al, 2007); (b) contrived stimuli and contrived tacts (Fiorile & Greer, 2007;Gilic, 2005;Helou-Care, 2008;Nirgudkar, 2005;Pistoljevic, 2008); (c) Korean language symbols (Lee-Park, 2005); and (d) mixed contrived and obscure stimuli (Greer, Stolfi, et al). After it has been established that the students are not familiar with the stimuli (e.g., they cannot tact or respond to the stimuli as listener or speaker), the children are taught to match to sample for visual stimuli while the experimenter says the tact for the stimuli, thus simulating the natural conditions described by Horne and Lowe (1996).…”

“…At this stage we concluded that the children had Naming as a verbal developmental cusp and a new learning capability. In summary, when we applied MEI across listener and speaker responses with training sets, children who did not have Naming acquired it (Fiorile & Greer, 2007;Gilic, 2005;Greer & O'Sullivan, 2007;Helou-Care, 2008;Pistoljevic, 2008).…”

“…However, the benefits of the procedure with language-delayed children are that it allowed the researchers to isolate and manipulate instructional histories and control for prerequisites experimentally (Fiorile & Greer, 2007;Gilic, 2005;Greer, Wiegand, & Kracher, 2006;Greer, Yuan, & Gautreaux, 2005;SpeckmanCollins, Park, & Greer, 2007).…”