A Comparison of Tact Training and Bidirectional Intraverbal Training in Teaching a Foreign Language: A Refined Replication

Abstract

The present study aimed to replicate the findings of Dounavi (Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 47(1), 165-170 2014) by evaluating the effects of foreign tact and bidirectional intraverbal training on emergent verbal relations. Training involved teaching three English-speaking adults to tact visual stimuli according to their foreign (French) referents, and to vocally emit the reverse relation following the presentation of written words in native-to-foreign (English-to-French) and foreign-to-native (French-to-English) intraverbal relations. A modified multiple probe design using pre-and posttraining probes was used to assess the efficacy of each training method in teaching a small foreign language vocabulary and to probe for emergent relations following training. The findings showed that foreign tact and native-to-foreign intraverbal training was more efficient and resulted in greater emergent responding than training in the foreign-to-native relation. Follow-up probes were conducted 4 weeks after the posttraining probes to evaluate the levels of responding for each of the trained and emergent relations. Results from maintenance probes were varied across the trained and emergent relations; it is interesting that the levels of responding in the emergent relations was greater.

Teaching a small foreign language vocabulary to children using tact and listener instruction with a prompt delay

“…There is a growing body of literature examining the effectiveness of teaching a foreign language using behavior‐analytic procedures (Cortez et al, 2020; Daly & Douvani, 2020; Davidson & O'Connor, 2019; Dounavi, 2011, 2014; Matter et al, 2020; May et al, 2016, 2019; Petursdottir & HafliĐadóttir, 2009; Petursdottir et al, 2008; Rosales et al, 2012; H. Wu & Miller, 2007; W. L. Wu et al, 2019). Overall, these studies focused on teaching a subset of skills (e.g., listener and tact responses) and probing the emergence of others (e.g., intraverbal responses) to evaluate the most effective and efficient arrangements.…”

A systematic review of empirical intraverbal research: 2015–2020

“…One experiment found comparative mixed maintenance outcomes (4.3%; O’Neill et al., 2015). Another experiment found negative maintenance outcomes (4.3%; Daly & Dounavi, 2020).…”

“…(2015) presented trials with vocal (e.g., saying the name of a country), as well as non‐vocal (e.g., showing the picture of a flag with the text “capital”) antecedents. The experiment by Daly and Dounavi (2020) taught foreign language with visual antecedent stimuli in the form of text with the rationale this was more similar to standard approaches which use textbooks. Daly and Dounavi also pointed out the potential benefit of a S D that remains present as opposed to the fleeting nature of auditory stimuli.…”

“…(2016) and Jennings and Miguel (2017) used tact and intraverbal training to establish equivalence classes. Additionally, three experiments compared intraverbal training to tact training (6.1%; Daly & Dounavi, 2020; Maldonado et al., 2020; Wu et al., 2019). Nearly one third of experiments (29.2%) investigated the intraverbal as the dependent variable.…”

A Systematic Review of Emergent Learning Outcomes Produced by Foreign language Tact Training

“…After initial full-text eligibility screening, we identified nine articles that met the criteria (Cortez et al, 2020(Cortez et al, , 2021Daly & Dounavi, 2020;Dounavi, 2014;Matter et al, 2020;May et al, 2019;Petursdottir & Hafliđadóttir, 2009;Petursdottir et al, 2008;Wu et al, 2019). We then conducted reference and citation searches using Google Scholar and Web of Science.…”