A programmed instruction tutoring system for Java™: consideration of learning performance and software self-efficacy

Establishing naming in typically developing two-year-old children as a function of multiple exemplar speaker and listener experiences

Naming is a verbal developmental capability and cusp that allows children to acquire listener and speaker functions without direct instruction (e.g., incidental learning of words for objects). We screened 19 typically developing 2- and 3-year-old children for the presence of Naming for 3-dimensional objects. All 9 3-year-olds had Naming, and 8 of 10 2-year-olds lacked Naming. For the 2-year-old children who lacked Naming, we used multiple-probe designs (2 groups of 4 children) to test the effect of multiple exemplar instruction (MEI) across speaker and listener responses on the emergence of Naming. Prior to the MEI, the children could not emit untaught listener or speaker responses following match-to-sample instruction with novel stimuli, during which they had heard the experimenter tact the stimuli. After MEI with a different set of novel stimuli, the children emitted listener and speaker responses when probed with the original stimuli, in the absence of any further instruction with those stimuli. Seven of 8 children acquired the speaker and listener responses of Naming at 83% to 100% accuracy. We discuss the basic and applied science implications.

A rose by naming: how we may learn how to do it

Naming appears to be the source of the explosion in language development and involves the integration of the initially separate listener and speaker responses. This integration has a role in the development of reading, writing, and the following and construction of verbal algorithms that make types of complex human behavior possible. Considerable research has investigated the role of Naming in the emergence of derived relations. Recent research has also investigated the emergence of Naming itself. We describe these experiments and the experiences that function to induce Naming. We also describe evidence about preverbal developmental cusps that are foundational to the emergence of Naming and the evidence on its reinforcement sources. The isolation of the role of the environment in the emergence of Naming identifies stimuli that were said to be missing in accounts that were critical of Skinner's (1957) account of verbal behavior. These arguments purported that the phenomenon was not attributable to learning because of the "poverty of the stimulus." Some of the relevant stimuli now appear to be identified.