Stimulus generalization and contextual control affect the development of equivalence classes. Experiment 1 demonstrated primary stimulus generalization from the members of trained equivalence classes. Adults were taught to match six spoken Icelandic nouns and corresponding printed words and pictures to one another in computerized three-choice…

Many children with autism communicate through the use of alternative communication systems, such as sign language. Limited research has been conducted on the situations under which sign language will be acquired across verbal operants without direct teaching. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate exposure to sign language on the…

Naming is a verbal developmental capability and cusp that allows children to acquire listener and speaker functions without direct instruction (e.g., incidental learning of words for objects). We screened 19 typically developing 2- and 3-year-old children for the presence of Naming for 3-dimensional objects. All 9 3-year-olds had Naming, and 8 of…

Children with autism often do not learn to mand for information without structured teaching. Studies have demonstrated that manipulation of establishing operations (EOs), prompts, prompt fading, and differential reinforcement are effective in teaching children with autism to ask "wh" questions such as "what," "who," and "where." To date, no…

Naming appears to be the source of the explosion in language development and involves the integration of the initially separate listener and speaker responses. This integration has a role in the development of reading, writing, and the following and construction of verbal algorithms that make types of complex human behavior possible. Considerable…

Three popular assertions have hindered the promotion of an empiricist approach to language acquisition: (a) that Brown and Hanlon (1970) claimed to offer data that parents do not reinforce their children's grammaticality; (b) that Brown and Hanlon also claimed to offer data that parents do not provide negative evidence (i.e., corrective feedback)…

The effectiveness of a language-training procedure that emphasized reinforcing vocal "reasonable attempts" (any response directed at an interventionist and within a broader class of correct responses) was compared with a procedure that emphasized shaping (reinforcing successive approximations that more closely resembled the target vocalization).…

"The Analysis of Verbal Behavior" ("TAVB") publishes experimental and theoretical papers relevant to a behavioral analysis of language. Normand, Fossa, and Poling (2000) reviewed the published studies in "TAVB" across several dimensions and found that despite the growth of the journal, most articles published in "TAVB" from 1982 to 1998 were…

Matching-to-sample and sequence training procedures were used to develop responding to stimulus classes that were considered analogous to 3 aspects of verbal behavior: identifying synonyms and parts of speech,and using syntax. Matching-to-sample procedures were used to train 12 paired associates from among 24 stimuli. These pairs were analogous to…

A major focus of research on language acquisition in infancy involves experimental studies of the infant's ability to discriminate various kinds of speech or speech-like stimuli. This research has demonstrated that infants are sensitive to many fine-grained differences in the acoustic properties of speech utterance. Furthermore, these empirical…

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…

This study is a replication of Sundberg and Sundberg (1990) that compared topography-based verbal behavior with selection-based verbal behavior in terms of acquisition, accuracy, and testing for the emergence of a new verbal relation. Participants were three typical children and three developmentally disabled persons with autism. The study sought…

Language acquisition has been a contentious topic among linguists, psycholinguists, and behaviorists for decades. Although numerous theories of language acquisition have surfaced, none have sufficiently accounted for the subtleties of the language that children acquire. The present study attempts to explain the role of modeling and automatic…

Many children with autism do not imitate adult vocalizations, an important skill in learning to talk. Pairing adult vocalizations with preferred stimuli has been shown to increase free-operant vocalizations but effects are temporary; thus, direct reinforcement may be necessary to establish durable vocal behaviors. In Experiment 1, directly…

According to Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior, the mand and the tact are functionally independent verbal operants, each of which is acquired through a unique history of reinforcement. The present study attempted to replicate the findings of Lamarre and Holland (1985), who empirically demonstrated functional independence of mands and…