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NAMING AND CATEGORIZATION IN YOUNG CHILDREN: VOCAL TACT TRAINING
Author(s) -
Lowe C. Fergus,
Horne Pauline J.,
Harris Fay D. A.,
Randle Valerie R. L.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of the experimental analysis of behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1938-3711
pISSN - 0022-5002
DOI - 10.1901/jeab.2002.78-527
Subject(s) - tact , categorization , psychology , test (biology) , stimulus (psychology) , audiology , sample (material) , communication , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , artificial intelligence , computer science , medicine , paleontology , chemistry , chromatography , biology
In three experiments, 2‐ to 4‐year‐old children, following pretraining with everyday objects, were presented with arbitrary stimuli of differing shapes. In Experiment 1A, 9 subjects were trained one common tact response, “zag,” to three of these and a second tact, “vek,” to another three. In category match‐to‐sample Test 1, 4 subjects sorted accurately when required only to look at the sample before selecting from five comparisons. The remaining 5 subjects succeeded in Test 2, in which they were required to tact the sample before selecting comparisons. Experiment 1B showed, for 2 of these subjects, that tact training with 12 arbitrary stimuli established two six‐member classes that were still intact 6 weeks later. In Experiment 2, 3 new subjects participated in a common tact training procedure that ensured that none of the exemplars from the same class were presented together prior to the test for three‐member classes. Two subjects passed category Test 1 and the third passed Test 2. Tests showed subjects' listener behavior in response to hearing /zog/ and /vek/ to be in place. These experiments indicate that common naming is effective in establishing arbitrary stimulus classes and that category match‐to‐sample testing provides a robust measure of categorization.