TEACHING NAMING OF COIN VALUES—COMPREHENSION BEFORE PRODUCTION VERSUS PRODUCTION ALONE1

The purposes of this experiment were to determine whether (a) it would require fewer trials to teach verbal production of coin values directly or to teach auditory comprehension first, (b) comprehension training would generalize or transfer to production, and (c) production training would generalize to comprehension. Fourteen mentally retarded subjects participated. Their mean mental age was 4.83 yr (SD = 1.83), their mean chronological age was 12.67 yr (SD = 3.17), their mean IQ was 43.86 (SD = 7.81), and their mean arithmetic grade level was Kindergarten 0.1. A matched groups pretest-posttest design, as well as a multiple baseline across responses within each group were employed. The Comprehension-Production Group received coin-value training using two procedures sequentially: auditory comprehension (pointing to the correct coins in response to their verbally stated value) followed by verbal production (verbally stating the coins' value in response to a pointing prompt). The Production Group was trained on the production procedure only. Each subject was repeatedly administered coin-value comprehension and coin-value production tests, which provided the dependent measures. The results indicated that the two experimental groups improved significantly in their comprehension and production of coin values from pretest to posttest and maintained those increments on one- and four-week followup tests. Mean group performance on four-week followups ranged from 89 to 96% correct for the two dependent measures and two groups. Multiple-baseline data showed pronounced increases in performance only after training was initiated on a particular coin. A comparison of the number of trials required for both groups to complete their respective training programs indicated that teaching production alone (X? trials = 137.42) was significantly more efficient than training both comprehension and production (X? = 281.71). The failure of the comprehension procedure to facilitate production acquisition was evidenced by the fact that the Comprehension-Production Group required as many verbal naming trials to achieve mastery as did the Production Group. On the other hand, there was generalization from production training to comprehension. Subjects in the Production Group who were not trained to point to the coins in response to verbal instruction averaged 99% correct on the comprehension test. Research to this point may suggest an interaction between mental level and direction of transfer. The mentally retarded may experience facilitation from production to comprehension training, and for the nonretarded, the direction of transfer may be the converse.     

False recognition of static and dynamic object properties by preschool children

A false recognition task was used to compare preschool children's use of static and dynamic properties of objects in semantic processing. Four, five, and six year old children heard a list of object names, and then were tested for recognition of these words with a recognition test list that included distractor words that were static or dynamic properties of the objects on the first list. False recognition scores of dynamic properties were higher than those for static, for 4 and 5 year old children, with no differences for 6 year old children. The results argue for a functional basis for the encoding of referential terms in memory, and are discussed in terms of two models of semantic development.This research was partially supported by Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Research Service Award HD 07066 and U.S. Public Health Service Grant HD 00870 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the Kansas Center for Mental Retardation and Human Development.     

Effects of prompting and reinforcement of one response pattern upon imitation of a different modeled pattern

Twelve preschool children participated in a study of the effects of explicit training on the imitation of modeled behavior. The responses trained involved a marble-dropping pattern that differed from the modeled pattern. Training consisted of physical prompts and verbal praise during a single session. No prompts or praise were used during test periods. After operant levels of the experimental responses were measured, training either preceded or was interposed within a series of exposures to modeled behavior that differed from the trained behavior. Children who were initially exposed to a modeling session immediately imitated, whereas those children who were initially trained immediately performed the appropriate response. Children initially trained on one pattern generally continued to exhibit that pattern even after many modeling sessions. Children who first viewed the modeled response and then were exposed to explicit training of a different response reversed their response pattern from the trained response to the modeled response within a few sessions. The results suggest that under certain conditions explicit training will exert greater control over responding than immediate modeling stimuli.     

Teaching a complex verbal response to a hearing-impaired girl

A 3-yr-old hearing-impaired girl, who used neither the article "the" nor the auxiliary verb "is" was taught to use these words in describing a picture, initially through imitation and then in response to the command, "Tell me about this". As a result, she was able to use sentences in the present progressive form to describe a number of pictures on which she had received no training. This newly acquired behavior was subsequently extinguished and then reinstated.     

The influence of verbal and imagery strategies on processing figurative language

Four experiments on metaphor functions were designed to test a functionally orientated problem-solving approach, where act, content, and experience are treated as three aspects of cognition. Two experiments showed imagery strategies to be superior to verbal strategies as regards comprehension and production of metaphors. However, the results of the two other experiments showed no differences between imagery and verbal strategies.
Metaphor performance was uncorrelated with performance on general intelligence tests. The intercorrelations between different metaphor tasks were also generally low. The highest positive correlation was found with a measure of imagery control under imagery processing conditions. Aptness ratings of metaphors were unrelated to level of metaphor memory. However, comprehension of metaphors was observed to correlate positively with metaphor memory.
The results show that attitude factors are important for comprehension and production of metaphors, and that alternative memorization strategies may work equally well. In order to explain the observations a multi-level coding model was suggested.     

Repetition and verbal STM in transcortical sensory aphasia: a case study

The repetition performance of a patient (S.T.) with transcortical sensory aphasia is examined in four experiments with particular emphasis on the STM capacities underlying her performance. S.T.'s repetition of word strings exceeding her span (two words) is characterized by good recall of the final items and a strong tendency to lose the initial items in the input string. This pattern contrasts with the serial position effects observed in a phonologically based STM impairment, and it is suggested that a lexical-semantic impairment, also evident in S.T.'s naming and lexical comprehension, contributes to her inability to retain the primacy portions of the input string. Lexical effects obtained in her reproduction of words and nonwords, as well as word strings (Experiments 1 and 2), indicate that under conditions of impaired semantics S.T. is relying on lexical phonological information to repeat. Priming by repeated exposure (Experiment 3) failed to improve her repetition performance, indicating that access to lexical information is brief and dependent on recent phonological input. In Experiment 4, the role of syntactic structure in S.T.'s sentence repetition was examined, and it was shown that syntactic structure affects the recall of order information, but not the number of items recalled. The repetition and verbal STM abilities of this patient, in light of her total language profile, are then evaluated in the context of a language-based view of verbal STM.     

Imitation in toddlers as a function of motor and verbal aspects of modeling

This study investigated the effects of the motor and verbal aspects of modeling on imitation. The subjects were 2- and 3-year-old children (N = 96). The child's imitation responses were recorded during the play period that followed each modeled act. Each child observed the model in one of four modeling conditions. In Condition 1, the model "flew" a telephone while saying that he or she was flying an airplane. Imitation was recorded as motor if the child flew the telephone but was recorded as verbal and realistic if the child flew an airplane. In Condition 2, the model flew an airplane while saying that he or she was flying a telephone. Imitation was recorded as verbal if the child flew the telephone. In Condition 3, the model flew an airplane and said that he or she was flying an airplane. If the child flew an airplane, imitation was scored as motor, verbal, and realistic. In Condition 4, the model flew a telephone and said that he or she was flying a telephone. Imitation was scored as motor and verbal if the child flew the telephone but was scored as realistic if the child flew the airplane. In Condition 1, 2-year-olds displayed more motor imitation than 3-year-olds, and 3-year-olds displayed more verbal-reality imitation than 2-year-olds. Boys displayed more motor imitation than girls. There were no age or sex differences in Condition 2. In Condition 3, 2-year-olds imitated more than 3-year-olds, with 3-year-old girls imitating the least. In Condition 4, reality imitation was largely due to 2-year-old boys' imitation of masculine-type acts.     

PARENTAL TRAINING OF THE PLURAL MORPHEME IN NORMAL TODDLERS1

Experimental studies with young normal children can provide useful strategy for the functional analysis of language. Research by Whitehurst (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1972, 13 , 502–515) exemplifies this approach, in which 2-yr-old children were exposed to a training procedure that involved imitation and differential reinforcement for a two-word productive sequence of the adjective-noun form. Results indicated that these young children could be trained to produce rudimentary novel utterances that were grammatically appropriate. More recently, Hursh and Sherman (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1973, 15 , 328–339) reported the existence of a functional relationship between parental modelling and reinforcement of vocalizations, and increased instances of these vocalizations in young (15- to 20-month-old) children. These demonstrations relate to a summary of findings with linguistically deviant populations discussed by Sherman (Advances in Child Development, 1971). The present study attempts to extend these “generative” investigations to normal children and to provide useful information for those interested in teaching speech forms to them. Modelling and differential reinforcement were used by three mothers to establish the use of the plural morpheme in the speech of their 19- to 25-month-old children. During training trials, verbal praise was presented contingent on correct labelling of singular and plural items, while correct labelling was modelled if the child responded incorrectly. Children learned to label specifically trained sets of singular and plural items and also exhibited correct labelling when asked to label never-trained singular and plural items. After establishing correct usage, the same training procedures were used to train reversed labelling (plural responses to single items and singular responses to plural items). This produced a corresponding reversal of responding (both trained and untrained items) by each child for the plural items but not for singular items. Correct singular and plural labelling was recovered by returning to the initial procedures.     

Metacognition reconsidered: Implications for intervention research

Metacognitive training techniques have been used successfully to improve children's problem-solving skills. The concept of metacognition needs further refinement, however, if it is to continue to be useful as an explanatory construct. Specifically, we argue that more attention needs to be paid to how metacognitive abilities are acquired, how this knowledge could be used to help improve the performance of children with learning difficulties, and how metacognition may be related to other self-evaluation processes.This paper was completed with support from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Grant HD05951), and from the Department of Education (Grant 00840068). We would like to express our appreciation and thanks to Joseph Campione and to Annemarie Palinscar, who patiently listened to, and frequently commented upon, the ideas presented in this paper.     

Mode-relations in language learning by language-deficient retarded subjects

The relationship between language comprehension and production was examined with two severely language-deficient retarded subjects who were taught the plural form /z/. Comprehension and production were trained concurrently with different words in each mode until correct plural use occurred in the untrained mode for each word. Subsequent training of reversed plural use in comprehension for one subject and production for the other failed to result in reversed plural use in the untrained modes for those words. This mode-independence contrasted with interdependence displayed by normal children in earlier study using similar procedures. The results are discussed in relation to the normal developmental process and the possible deviation from it.     

An experimental analysis of verbal imitation in preschool children

A model presented English words to three preschool children and reinforced accurate imitation of these words. The model also presented novel Russian words but the subjects' imitation of these words was never reinforced. As long as the subjects' imitation of English words was reinforced, their accuracy of imitating non-reinforced Russian words increased. When reinforcement was not contingent upon imitation of English words, accuracy of imitating both the English and the Russian words decreased. These results support and extend previous work on imitation.     

Mothers' and infants' responses to their partners' spontaneous action and vocal/verbal imitation

Twenty mother-infant dyads (10 boys, 10 girls) were videotaped longitudinally at ages 10, 13, 17, and 21 months during in-home free play and bath sessions. Mothers' and infants' responses to their partners' naturally occurring action and vocal/verbal imitations were described, and relations to infants' imitation rates and vocabularies were examined. Mothers' response rates were consistently high and unrelated to infants' imitation rates. As early as 10 months, infants responded to the great majority of maternal imitations, especially action imitations, often with actions. Infants' return imitations to action matching indicated increasing awareness of being imitated. Infants' responses to mothers' vocal/verbal imitation were associated with their later vocabulary levels. Children who would be more lexically advanced at 17 and/or 21 months provided more social responses at 10 months, more socially responsive actions and return verbal imitations at 13 months, and more non-imitative socially responsive words at 17 and 21 months.     

The role of verbal memory in regressions during reading

During reading, participants generally move their eyes rightward on the line. A number of eye movements, called regressions, are made leftward, to words that have already been fixated. In the present study, we investigated the role of verbal memory during regressions. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to read sentences for comprehension. After reading, they were asked to make a regression to a target word presented auditorily. The results revealed that their regressions were guided by memory, as they differed from those of a control group who did not read the sentences. The role of verbal memory during regressions was then investigated by combining the reading task with articulatory suppression (Exps. 2 and 3). The results showed that articulatory suppression affected the size and the accuracy of the initial regression but had a minimal effect on corrective saccades. This suggests that verbal memory plays an important role in determining the location of the initial saccade during regressions.     

Two faces of verbal ability

Although psychologists often think and act as though there were only one global domain of verbal ability, there are actually two—verbal comprehension and verbal fluency. For reasons that are not entirely clear, verbal comprehension has received, by far, the most attention in both the psychometric and information-processing literatures. Both are important, pervasive abilities. For example, whereas reading draws primarily on verbal comprehension ability, writing draws primarily on verbal fluency ability; similarly, whereas listening primarily requires verbal comprehension, speaking depends more heavily on verbal fluency. This article seeks to redress some of the imbalance in the literature on the study of these two broad domains of verbal ability. The article is divided into four main parts. The first parts set the stage by placing the study of verbal abilities in a historical context within the field of psychology. The second part describes some alternative approaches to the study of verbal comprehension, summarizing what we have learned from these approaches. The third part reviews some of the few studies that have examined verbal fluency and then describes our own new information-processing approach to the study of this ability. The fourth part explores the relations between the two faces of verbal ability—comprehension and fluency.     

Comprehension,selective imitation,and the CIP hypothesis

The role of comprehension training in the selective imitation of indirect-direct object sentences was assessed for six preschool children. A modeling condition resulted in normal usage of indirect-direct object sentences for five of six subjects, but reversed usage was not obtained when modeling was reversed. Subsequent receptive comprehension training on normal and reversed forms of indirect-direct object sentences resulted in generalization to the productive mode. These results were related to an hypothesis about language acquisition in which selective imitation is a function of comprehension.     

Lateralization of temporal lobe dysfunction and verbal encoding

The contribution of encoding deficits to verbal-learning difficulties known to be associated with temporal lobe dysfunction was investigated. Auditory and visual false-recognition tasks, which assess verbal encoding strategies, were given to patients with left-temporal-lobe (LTL) and right-temporal-lobe (RTL) surgical excisions and to a group of normal controls (NC). On both auditory and visual tasks, LTL patients made significantly more false-recognition errors than the other subjects on related, but not unrelated, words in the test list. The findings indicate that LTL patients are able to initially encode verbal material and that a breakdown in information processing occurs at a later stage. On the auditory tasks, the performance of RTL patients did not differ from that of NC subjects. However, on the visual tasks, RTL patients, as compared to both LTL and NC subjects, made fewer false-recognition errors. The performance of RTL patients, in contrast to LTL patients, could be interpreted as a reduced encoding of the visual attribute of verbal material. Another possible explanation considered was difficulty in familiarity discrimination.     

“Think Aloud”: A program for developing self-control in young aggressive boys

Think Aloud was designed as a training program to improve self-control in 6- to 8-year-old boys. It involved modeling and verbalization of cognitive activity to foster use of verbal mediation skills in dealing with both cognitive and interpersonal problems. It was hypothesized that this training would lead to improvement in test performance and teacher ratings of classroom behavior in hyperaggressive boys. Twelve aggressive second grade boys participated in daily, 30-minute, individual sessions for 6 weeks. Normal and aggressive control subjects received no intervention. Teachers rated both trained and untrained aggressive boys as improving in aggressive behaviors but they rated the experimental group as showing improvement on a significantly larger number of prosocial behaviors. The pattern of performance on cognitive tests also changed significantly in the experimental group. On pretest, their pattern differed from normals and resembled the aggressive control group, while on posttest their pattern resembled normals and differed from aggressive controls. Suggestions were made concerning additional refinements needed in the program, but overall results indicated potential value in the present approach for providing assistance to aggressive boys in the early grades.This investigation, from the Departments of Pediatrics and Psychiatry, University of Colorado Medical School, was supported in part by a Research Scientist Award No. MK2-47 356 from the National Institute of Mental Health and by Grant No. NEG 003-0029 from the National Institute of Education. However, the opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the NIE, and no official endorsement by the National Institute of Education should be inferred.We are grateful to Mary Ann Bash and Margaret Simmons for their assistance in carrying out the program and to the Denver Public Schools for their continued cooperation.     

Training generative verb usage by imitation and reinforcement procedures

Three retarded children were trained, using imitation and reinforcement procedures, to produce past and present tense forms of verbs in response to verbal requests. Two types of experimental sessions were arranged: training sessions and probe sessions. During training sessions, a child was trained to produce one verb in both the past and the present tense. Then, in a probe session, the generalization of this training was tested by presenting to the child a series of untrained verbs interspersed with previously trained verbs. Responses to untrained verbs were never reinforced. Training sessions alternated with probe sessions throughout a multiple baseline design involving four classes of verb inflections as the baselines. The results showed that, as past and present tense forms of verbs within an inflectional class were trained, the children correctly produced past and present tense forms of untrained verbs within this class. When verbs from two or more classes were trained, the children correctly produced the verb tenses from each of these classes. Thus, the imitation and reinforcement procedures were effective in teaching generative use of verb inflections.     

Development of the use of word order in comprehension

Thirty-three children aged between 19 and 38 months were presented with six reversible active and six reversible passive sentences and were required to act them out. For each child, mean length of utterance was calculated from a sample of spontaneous speech. Mean length of utterance was a more consistent predictor of performance than chronological age. Seven children with a mean length of utterance between 1.0 and 1.5 morphemes per utterance were unable to use the word order information in either type of sentence for comprehension. More developed children could comprehend reversible active sentences but not reversible passives. Children with a mean length of utterance between 3.0 and 3.5 morphemes per utterance systematically reversed the meaning of the reversible passives. The results are discussed in relation to previous studies of word order comprehension and studies of word order in production.This research was supported in part by PHS grant HD-02908 from the National Institute of Child Health and Development. Roger Brown is the principal investigator.     

Semantic and phonological performance in adults learning novel object and action words

Twenty normal adults participated in two training sessions designed to teach eight novel object words and eight novel action words. Each subject received comprehension and production training and was probed at the end of each session to determine the ability to retrieve lexical items in a naming task. The probe data were also analyzed for phonological accuracy. Reaction time measures for the production probes were recorded to determine differences between action and object words in terms of retrieval difficulty. The results demonstrated a significant difference in early learning of action and object words during comprehension training and production training and in production probes. Object words tended to be learned more easily in both comprehension and production training, and they were retrieved correctly more often in production probes. There were no significant differences in the phonological accuracy between the word types. Reaction time data indicated significant differences in early as well as later learning between action and object words, with object words having significantly shorter rection times as compared with action words. Results are discussed in the context of prior research.