Emerging Tacts and Selections from Previous Learned Skills: A Comparison between Two Types of Naming

Abstract

Naming consists of tacting an object and selecting it upon hearing its name as a result of emergence. After acquiring naming, children learn objectname relations more quickly and, hence, it is an important achievement in development. We studied the acquisition of the two skills that define naming, using two procedures, in seven typically developing 4-year-old children. The tact-selection procedure consisted of (a) teaching tacts of objects (or pictures) and probing for object selection upon hearing the objects' names, and (b) teaching object selection and probing tacts. The pairing procedure consisted of presenting objects (or pictures) at the same time that an adult said their names, without requiring from the child other response than attending. Of the seven children, five showed emergence of selection responses and tacts. Children showed more instances of emergence with the tact-selection procedure than with the pairing procedure and with three-dimensional (3-D) objects than with pictures. The results have important implications for teaching preschool children and children with learning disabilities.

Emergence of Naming Relations and Intraverbals After Auditory Stimulus Pairing

“…The tacts emerged in all participants who experienced the pairing procedures. These results replicated those of previous studies regarding the effect of the pairing procedure for producing the emergence of tacts (Carnerero and Pérez-González 2014;Pérez-González et al 2011, 2014b. The selections emerged in three of the four participants of each experimental condition.…”

“…The performance of the adults in this study seems to contrast with that obtained in the studies on naming with children, who typically demonstrate the emergence of the selections after learning the tacts at about two years of age (e.g., Lipkens et al 1993; see also studies with children with autism by Carnerero and Pérez-González 2014, and with children about six-years-old by Pérez-González et al 2014b;Pérez-González et al 2011). The selection task, however, was completely different, as in the present study the selecting-based task involved a successive discrimination among the four sounds, in which the visual stimuli related to each sound were presented in four locations, i.e., the task involved complex discriminations with sounds and visual stimuli.…”

“…In other words, the MEI procedure served to promote, or induce, the naming capability. Additionally, other studies have found that the echoics emmitted by the child can affect naming (e.g., Hawkins et al 2009;Longano and Greer 2014; see also the studyes by Pérez-González et al 2014b;Pérez-González et al 2011, on the type of naming related in the next paragraph). The results of those studies, in addition to the indicated procedures to induce naming, suggest that typically developing children acquired the naming capability after receiving similar experiences.…”

“…Greer and Ross (2008) pointed out that a typically-developing child can observe an adult saying the name of an object and after just this observation both the tact and the object selection emerge without further teaching. This form of naming has been denominated pairing naming by Carnerero and Pérez-González (2014) and Pérez-González et al (2014b), full naming by Greer and Ross (2008;p. 149), and a naturalistic naming experience by Longano and Greer (2014; also see Longano, 2008).…”

“…We consider tact-selection teaching naming and pairing naming as two different capabilities (Carnerero and Pérez-González 2014;Pérez-González 2015). Pairing naming has been demonstrated by presenting children objects and saying its name and probing the tacts and the selections without reinforcement (Carnerero and Pérez-González 2014;Pérez-González et al 2011, 2014bLongano and Greer 2014;Rosales et al 2012;Shanman 2013). We have also demonstrated that some children who demonstrate tact-selection teaching naming do not demonstrate pairing naming , 2014b, which suggests that pairing naming is acquired later in development than tact-selection teaching naming.…”