Generalization in the Receptive and Productive Language of Preschool Children

Abstract

AbstractIn a study of the effects of four teaching strategies on receptive and productive language, sixteen normal preschool children received training on three Hebrew letters. Teaching strategies included exposure, match-to- sample, receptive, and productive methods; testing occurred concurrently in both receptive and productive language modalities. By the end of the sixth training session, 25 percent of the subjects in the match-to-sample condition and 75 percent of the subjects in both the receptive and productive conditions had reached criterion. Subjects who reached criterion in the match-to-sample and productive conditions also responded correctly on all test trials in the untrained modality. In the receptive condition, such generalized responding was limited. Performance in the exposure condition was significantly lower than performance in the other three conditions on both receptive and productive test trials.