Abstract
The present study aimed to replicate the findings of Dounavi (Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 47(1), 165–170 2014) by evaluating the effects of foreign tact and bidirectional intraverbal training on emergent verbal relations. Training involved teaching three English-speaking adults to tact visual stimuli according to their foreign (French) referents, and to vocally emit the reverse relation following the presentation of written words in native-to-foreign (English-to-French) and foreign-to-native (French-to-English) intraverbal relations. A modified multiple probe design using pre- and posttraining probes was used to assess the efficacy of each training method in teaching a small foreign language vocabulary and to probe for emergent relations following training. The findings showed that foreign tact and native-to-foreign intraverbal training was more efficient and resulted in greater emergent responding than training in the foreign-to-native relation. Follow-up probes were conducted 4 weeks after the posttraining probes to evaluate the levels of responding for each of the trained and emergent relations. Results from maintenance probes were varied across the trained and emergent relations; it is interesting that the levels of responding in the emergent relations was greater.
Highlights
The present study aimed to replicate the findings of Dounavi (Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 47(1), 165–170 2014) by evaluating the effects of foreign tact and bidirectional intraverbal training on emergent verbal relations
Researchers in this study found that foreign tact training was effective in producing emergent responding bidirectionally whereas following training in foreign listener relations emergent responding in the bidirectional intraverbal relations was variable across participants, with neither emergent intraverbal relation reaching criterion even though greater levels of emergent responding were found in the N-F intraverbal relation
The present study replicated Dounavi’s (2014) research using an improved methodology to compare the effect of foreign tact and bidirectional intraverbal instruction on the acquisition of a foreign language vocabulary and assess its effect on emergent responding and maintenance of acquired relations
Summary
The present study aimed to replicate the findings of Dounavi (Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 47(1), 165–170 2014) by evaluating the effects of foreign tact and bidirectional intraverbal training on emergent verbal relations. Most of the research on foreign language acquisition has been conducted with typically developing children (e.g., May, Downs, Marchant, & Dymond, 2016; Petursdottir & Hafliđadóttir, 2009; Petursdottir, Olafsdottir, & Aradottir, 2008; Rosales, Rehfeldt, & Lovett, 2011) Findings from these studies are variable, mainly showing that under certain circumstances behavioral training can be effective in teaching a foreign language and facilitating emergent responding. These effects have been observed in a Psychol Rec (2020) 70:243–255 small number of recent studies conducted with adults (e.g., Dounavi, 2011, 2014). A plethora of studies have demonstrated this phenomenon empirically (e.g., Grannan & Rehfeldt, 2012; May, Hawkins, & Dymond, 2013)
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