A miniature linguistic system was used to study acquisition of recombinative symbolic behavior. Three studies evaluated the teaching conditions of conditional discriminations with printed and spoken pseudowords that could potentially generate recombinative reading. Fifty-four college students across all studies learned to match 12 printed pseudowords to 12 spoken pseudowords. Some also matched pictures to the same spoken words. Each two-syllable pseudoword was formed by symbols from an arbitrarily created alphabet composed of four vowels and four consonants. Letters had univocal correspondence with phonemes. Recombinative receptive reading, comprehensive reading, and textual responding to pseudowords were periodically assessed. Experiment 1 (n  =  20) showed that recombinative reading increased as the number of trained words composed of the same symbols increased. Experiment 2 (n  =  14) showed that overtraining the same two words did not produce recombinative reading for most participants. Experiment 3 (n  =  20), in which training with pictures was omitted, showed that elemental control by within-syllable units can develop even when the trained pseudowords are meaningless (not related to pictures). The present results support the utility of the miniature linguistic system methodology for identifying and controlling environmental determinants of rudimentary reading skills.

RESUMO -Este estudo relata o emprego de um sistema lingüístico em miniatura para investigar a aprendizagem de leitura. Vinte estudantes de graduação (10 da área de exatas e 10 de humanas) aprenderam a relacionar fi guras e pseudo-palavras impressas às correspondentes pseudo-palavras ditadas, em tarefas de discriminação condicional realizadas em computador. Sessões de ensino foram intercaladas com testes de leitura de palavras novas, formadas pela recombinação de elementos das palavras ensinadas (generalização recombinativa). Nove estudantes de exatas e quatro de humanas apresentaram leitura recombinativa após a aprendizagem de 12 palavras. Os escores em leitura de palavras novas aumentaram à medida que aumentava o número de palavras ensinadas. Ambos os achados podem ser interpretados como efeitos de experiências de aprendizagem com relações simbólicas. As diferenças entre estudantes das áreas de humanas e exatas podem também refl etir fatores motivacionais.Palavras-chave: aprendizagem de leitura; sistema lingüístico em miniatura; quantidade de treino; ciências exatas e humanas; universitários. Individual Differences in Reading Acquisition with a Miniature Linguistic SystemABSTRACT -This study reports the use of a miniature linguistic system in order to investigate reading acquisition. Twenty college students, 10 from Natural Sciences and Engineering (NSE) and 10 from Health and Social Sciences (HSS) courses, learned to relate pictures and printed pseudo-words to dictated pseudo-words in conditional discrimination tasks presented by a computer. Teaching sessions were interspersed with tests of reading new words formed by recombination of elements of taught words (generative recombination). Nine students from NSE and four from HSS developed generalized reading after learning 12 relations with pseudo-words. Reading scores of new words increased as number of taught words increased. Both fi ndings could be interpreted as effects of learning experiences with symbolic relations. Differences between the NSE and the HSS students could also refl ect motivational factors.Key words: reading; miniature linguistic system; amount of training; health and social sciences; natural sciences and engineering; college students. Um Sistema Lingüístico em Miniatura (Esper, 1925(Esper, , 1933 consiste de um conjunto de estímulos que variam ao longo de uma ou mais dimensões (e.g., forma, letra, posição) e um conjunto de respostas específi cas a serem emitidas na presença daqueles estímulos (Foss, 1968). Sistemas lingü-ísticos naturais variam em muitas dimensões, como o grau de correspondência entre diferentes estímulos e respostas, o número de elementos e de regras subjacentes ao sistema.Sistemas lingüísticos em miniatura (SLM) têm sido úteis e valiosos para analisar relações funcionais entre variáveis ambientais e desenvolvimento de linguagem (Foss, 1968;Goldstein, 1981Goldstein, , 1983Horowitz & Jackson, 1959;Kennedy, 1972;MacWhinney, 1983;Miller & Ames, 1972;Nation & McLaughlin, 1986;Negata, 1977;Wetherby, 1978), possibilitando a mani...