PRODUCING GENERATIVE SENTENCE USAGE BY IMITATION AND REINFORCEMENT PROCEDURES1
- 1 September 1974
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Wiley in Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis
- Vol. 7 (3), 447-460
- https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1974.7-447
Abstract
Three retarded subjects and two developmentally normal toddlers were trained using imitation and reinforcement procedures to use correct sentences. The experimental task was to use sentences with correct subject‐verb agreement to describe pictures that were presented to the subjects. Two classes of sentences were taught: those involving a plural subject that required the use of the verb “are” (for example, “the boys are running”) and those involving a singular subject that required the use of the verb “is” (for example, “the boy is running”). The basic design of the study involved multiple baselines for each class of sentences. Four of the subjects began to produce novel, untrained sentences of a particular type to generalization probe pictures when that particular class of sentence was currently being trained. Thus, the imitation and reinforcement procedures appeared to be functional in producing generative sentence usage for both types of sentences. One subject produced correct sentences to both singular and plural probe pictures when only “is” sentences had been taught. A reversal procedure and retraining phase indicated that for this subject, imitation and reinforcement procedures for training one class of sentence behavior seemed functional in producing generative responses of the other class of sentences.Keywords
This publication has 9 references indexed in Scilit:
- TEACHING A COMPLEX VERBAL RESPONSE TO A HEARING‐IMPAIRED GIRLJournal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1972
- Generalized labeling on the basis of structural response classes by two young childrenJournal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1971
- TRAINING GENERATIVE VERB USAGE BY IMITATION AND REINFORCEMENT PROCEDURES1Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1970
- OPERANT TRAINING AND GENERALIZATION OF A VERBAL RESPONSE FORM IN A SPEECH‐DEFICIENT CHILDJournal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1970
- Programmed conditioning of linguistic competenceBehaviour Research and Therapy, 1970
- On Explaining LanguageScience, 1969
- A FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF RECEPTIVE LANGUAGE AND PRODUCTIVE SPEECH: ACQUISITION OF THE PLURAL MORPHEME1Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1969
- AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT: THE PRODUCTIVE USE OF THE PLURAL MORPHEMEJournal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1968
- Modification of syntactic styleJournal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1966