Abstract

In three experiments we investigated the relation between observing responses and incidental language acquisition by children ages 3 to 5 with and without disabilities. In Experiment I, participants heard the name of an object while observing an accompanying action with the object. The participants consistently acquired the actions associated with the objects, but learned few names. Experiment II compare responses to stimuli presented with and without actions, with the results indicating that the presence of an action hindered rather than facilitated incidental acquisition of names. In Experiment III, we selected participants who acquired listener responses when actions were present, but did not readily acquire the speaker responses. Following a multiple exemplar intervention, participants acquired both speaker and listener responses along with the action responses for novel stimuli. The findings suggest that when children are provided with a specific instructional history, they can acquire multiple benefits from a single language exposure experience.

Abstract

We tested the effects of the establishment of conditioned reinforcement for observing human faces and/or voices on the rate of learning, observing responses, and verbal operant emissions for four children, ages 4-5 years, with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and related disorders. We used a non-concurrent, delayed probe design across participants with pre and post-intervention measures. The intervention included a conjugate stimulus-stimulus pairing procedure. Results demonstrated that as a function of the intervention, faces were conditioned for three out of three participants and voices were conditioned for two out of two participants for whom either was lacking respectively prior to the intervention (both faces and voices were conditioned for one participant). Post-intervention probes demonstrated increases in rate of learning, observing responses, and verbal operants for all four participants.