Mastery of Echoics in Chinese Establishes Bidirectional Naming in Chinese for Preschoolers with Naming in English

Abstract

The onset of the verbal behavior developmental cusp of bidirectional naming (BiN) in a second language makes it possible for monolingual English-speaking children to learn names of things in a second language incidentally. We conducted 2 experiments to identify why monolingual English-speaking children cannot demonstrate BiN in another language when they demonstrated BiN in their native language. In Experiment I, using a group design (n = 32 preschoolers), we identified Chinese speech sounds that monolingual English-speaking children with BiN in English for familiar stimuli could not echo. In Experiment II, using a multiple-probe design, we investigated if mastery of echoics with the speech sounds identified in Experiment I would result in BiN in Chinese with 6 participants from Experiment I. The dependent variable was untaught responses to the probe stimuli presented following the naming experience based on the echoic stimuli from Experiment I. The results showed that echoic training was functionally related to the establishment of BiN in the second language. It appeared that the emission of accurate echoics might be the key to second-language BiN and that emergent correspondence between producing and hearing that occurs with the mastery of the echoic responding may be the source of reinforcement. Keywords Naming . Bilingual naming . Verbal behavior developmental cusp . Fast mapping . Echoic training for naming . Familiar and nonfamiliar stimuli and naming How young children acquire language, especially words, has attracted researchers' interests in both cognitive psychology (Carey & Bartlett, 1978) and verbal behavior

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“…Notably, these results have been replicated across children with different disabilities (e.g., learning delays and developmental disabilities, Greer et al, ; autism, Fiorile & Greer, ; Olaff et al, ), typically developing children (Gilic & Greer, ), very young (i.e., 2‐year‐old) children (Gilic & Greer, ), children with varying numbers of prerequisite BiN skills (e.g., echoics, tacts, and listener behavior), and children with extremely limited vocal–verbal repertoires (Fiorile & Greer, ). Despite different procedural manipulations such as echoic training during MTS instruction (Cao & Greer, ; Hawkins, Kingsdorf, Charnock, Szabo, & Gautreaux, ; Olaff et al, ) or matching without echoic training (Gilic & Greer, ), results show that BiN did not emerge until after MEI was implemented. Studies have also compared MEI to single‐exemplar instruction (SEI; e.g., Greer et al, ), which consists of targeting a single verbal operant at a time and teaching other verbal operants separately and sequentially via a series of simple discrimination contingencies (Green, ).…”

The Emergence of Bidirectional Naming Through Sequential Operant Instruction Following the Establishment of Conditioned Social Reinforcers

“…It is difficult to determine the specific importance of the clarification of an S D as a conditioned reinforcer for observing responses (e.g., Cao & Greer, 2019;Longano & Greer, 2015). It is possible that establishing the word sound and the visual stimulus relevant to a particular tact as conditioned reinforcers will strengthen not only the potential observing responses but also the discriminative control by those stimuli over other behavior (e.g., echoics and tacts).…”

Learning a foreign language: Effects of tact and listener instruction on the emergence of bidirectional intraverbals

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