Training Correspondence by Reinforcing Intermediate and Verbal Behavior

Different procedures have been used in the past to control the correspondence between verbal and its related nonverbal behavior. This study proposes a variant of these procedures for controlling that correspondence. This variant caIls for reinforcement contingent on related intermediate behaviors. Intermediate behaviors are those that occur between verbal behavior and its related nonverbal behavior. Ten preschool chiIdren ranging in age from 3 to 5 years, served as subjects. In this study, reinforcement was applied either to promises to engage in a certain activity later or to a series of intermediate behaviors specified for each of four preschoo1 activities. Consistently higher levels of correspondence occurred after reinforcement of intermediate behaviors in comparison to reinforcement of promises.     

Some Parameters of Correspondence Training and Generalized Verbal Control

The effects of correspondence training on subsequent verbal control over play behavior with non- referred toys was investigated. Correspondence training resulted in subsequent verbal control for three of four children. It was also found that the group data, as typically presented in similar research, did not consistently reflect individual trends. Experiment II assessed generalization of verbal control across non-toy play behaviors. No generalization occurred. In both Experiments I and 11, maintenance of behavior change following correspondence training occurred only when no competing response was reinforced. Experiment III found that correspondence could be trained in the one child who failed to respond appropriately during Experiment I, by teaching her to recite a "correspondence rule."     

Correspondence

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -