Behavioral treatment of children with phonological disorder: the efficacy of vocal imitation and sufficient-response-exemplar training

This study examined whether sufficient-response-exemplar training of vocal imitation would result in improved articulation in children with phonological disorder, and whether improved articulation established in the context of vocal imitation would transfer to other verbal classes such as object naming and conversational speech. Participant 1 was 6 years old and attended first grade in a regular public school. Participant 2 was 5 years 4 months old and attended a public kindergarten. Both participants had normal hearing and no additional handicaps. A multiple baseline design across behaviors (target sounds or blends) was employed to examine whether the vocal imitation training resulted in improved articulation. Results showed that both participants improved articulation once training was implemented, and that the improved articulation transferred from vocal imitation to more natural speech such as object naming and conversational speech. Improvement established during training was maintained posttraining and at a 6-month follow-up.     

Episodic and semantic memory in bilingual and monolingual children

Although bilinguality has been reported to confer advantages upon children with respect to various cognitive abilities, much less is known about the relation between memory and bilinguality. In this study, 60 (30 girls and 30 boys) bilingual and 60 (30 girls and 30 boys) monolingual children in three age groups (mean ages 8.5, 10.5 and 12.5 years) were compared on episodic memory and semantic memory tasks. Episodic memory was assessed using subject-performed tasks (with real or imaginary objects) and verbal tasks, with retrieval by both free recall and cued recall. Semantic memory was assessed by word fluency tests. Positive effects of bilingualism were found on both episodic memory and semantic memory at all age levels. These findings suggest that bilingual children integrate and/or organize the information of two languages, and so bilingualism creates advantages in terms of cognitive abilities (including memory). Some sex differences were also found in episodic memory but not in semantic memory. This episodic memory difference was found with younger children.     

Early phonological skills as a predictor of reading acquisition: a follow-up study from kindergarten to the middle of grade 2

The purpose of this study was to investigate the power of early measures of phonological skills (phonemic awareness, rapid naming, short-term memory) in predicting later reading skills at various points of time. About 70 children were followed from the end of kindergarten to the middle of grade 2. Correlation analyses were performed as well as a linear growth curve analyses. In the traditional regression analysis, phonemic awareness in kindergarten explained about 27% of the variance in word reading six months later and about 9.5% of the variance at the end of grade 1. Even when prior level of reading skill was included in the predictive equation, a significant amount of variance was still explained by phonemic awareness. The other predictor variables did not explain any variance in word reading, and phonemic awareness did not predict any variance in reading skills in grade 2. When using sentence reading as the dependent variable, phonemic awareness explained about 16% of unique variance after six months, and about 13% of the variance in the middle of grade 2. Similarly, when employing growth curve analysis, phonemic awareness was the only phonological factor that accounted for significant variance in the word reading slope, explaining about 25% of its variance, whereas naming and short-term memory did not explain any unique variance. The lack of predictive power of phonemic awareness on the sentence b-slope is assumed to be caused by unreliable sentence scores in kindergarten.     

OVERCOMING AN AUTISTIC CHILD'S FAILURE TO ACQUIRE A TACT REPERTOIRE

A 6-year-old nonvocal autistic girl who had acquired over 30 signs as mands (requests), simple intraverbals (English-sign translations), and imitative responses repeatedly failed to acquire a tact (labeling) repertoire. It was speculated that the verbal stimulus “What is that?” blocked the establishment of stimulus control by nonverbal stimuli. When procedures to transfer stimulus control from verbal to nonverbal stimuli were implemented, the subject quickly learned to tact all 18 target stimuli.     

Effects of error and errorless discrimination acquisition on reversal learning

The effectiveness of trial-and-error, graded-choice, and verbal-instruction procedures on the acquisition and maintenance of a two-choice simultaneous color discrimination in an intradimensional double-reversal learning situation was studied using 18 first-grade children. After acquiring a red-green discrimination during one 70-trial session, the discriminative roles of the stimuli were reversed for 30 trials, followed by a second reversal for 30 trials. Children in the graded-choice and verbal-instruction groups acquired and maintained the discriminations with fewer errors than children who learned by trial and error. The importance of the results in terms of two-stage discrimination learning theories is pointed out and similarities between errorless learning and overtraining are discussed.     

Early and late introduction of probes and stimulus control acquisition in fading

College students learned to name Braille patterns presented visually using a fading procedure in which Braille patterns were superimposed on letter names after which letter names were attenuated. Measurement of acquisition was accomplished by presenting probes—consisting of the Braille stimuli only—throughout fading. Effects of probes upon acquisition were assessed by introducing probes early or late in fading. Fewer fading levels were needed for Braille elements to acquire control when probes were introduced early rather than late. When probes were introduced late, all subjects learned to name the Braille elements as the letters were being faded out. When probes were introduced early, however, most subjects learned to name the Braille elements as they were being faded in. Since virtually no errors occurred during compound-stimulus presentations, the probe procedure did not induce errors during acquisition. Quantitative analysis of probe data suggested that inclusion of probes enhanced the control acquired by the Braille elements during compound-stimulus presentations. The reported effects may have been due to differences in the relative frequency of reinforcement presented during compounds and probes.     

Prepositional phrases spoken and heard

The relation between verbal and nonverbal behavior with common syntactic properties was investigated, using retarded and nonretarded children. Reinforcement was contingent on either verbal or nonverbal responses whereas responses of the other repertoire had no experimental consequences. Changes sometimes occurred in the unreinforced (collateral) repertoire, but they were always changes in the stimulus control of pre-existing topographies. A contingency involving responses of one repertoire never instated new topographies in the collateral repertoire. This suggested that the problem of “cross-modality generalization” should be reformulated to distinguish explicitly between instating new topographies and changing the stimulus control of pre-existing topographies. The result confirmed Skinner's hypothesis about “the same response spoken and heard” and clarified some anomalies in previous studies.     

Attentional demands and recall of verbal and color information in action events

Two experiments addressed the influence of secondary task performance at encoding on recall of different features of subject-performed tasks (SPTs) involving objects (e.g., turn the wallet). In Experiment 1, memory for verbs and colors of objects was assessed, with object names serving as cues. In Experiment 2, object and color memory were assessed, with verbs serving as cues. Results from both experiments indicated a greater deterioration of memory performance under divided attention for verbal features than for colors. In addition, intention to remember did not affect performance for any feature in either experiment. The overall pattern of outcome is discussed relative to the view that encoding of verbal features of SPTs is more attention-demanding than encoding of physical task features, such as color.     

Setting events controlling social verbal exchanges between students with developmental delays

The peer social verbal exchanges (social conversational units) between four developmentally delayed students were studied as a function of setting events. A single conversational unit consisted of a verbal exchange in which each individual functioned as both speaker and listener. Each unit included a three term verbal contingency. Data were collected by trained observers viewing videotapes of 20-minute sessions in which running times were burned onto the videotape. Frequencies of social conversational units were measured under two conditions. Comparisons were made between sessions in which the teacher responded only when spoken to and sessions in which the teacher was absent using a combined reversal and multiple schedule design. Results showed that peer conversational units emerged at high rates when the teacher was absent and at low or nonexistent rates when the teacher responded only when spoken to in the living room setting. The setting and audience control for peer verbal exchanges were discussed as functions possibly of either a punishing audience, establishing operations, or response deprivation.