Abstract
Two female infants, aged 11 and 14 months, were exposed to a procedure in which an experimenter-emitted vocal response was paired with an established form of reinforcement (positive condition). One of the subjects was also exposed to a procedure in which an experimenter-emitted vocal response was paired with a neutral stimulus (neutral condition), and a procedure in which an experimenter-emitted vocal response was paired with a mild aversive stimulus (negative condition). An AB design was used with pre- and post-pairing measures. The results showed that after the positive pairing the targeted responses increased in frequency in 75% of the sessions. Responding remained constant during the neutral condition, but dropped sharply in the negative condition. These data suggest that a critical variable related to an infant’s native language acquisition is the stimulus-stimulus pairing process that occurs when parents or caretakers speak to their infants.
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Portions of this paper were submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Master of Arts degree, Western Michigan University, 1983. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of James W. Partington and Margaret Vaughan.
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Smith, R., Michael, J. & Sundberg, M.L. Automatic reinforcement and automatic punishment in infant vocal behavior. Analysis Verbal Behav 13, 39–48 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03392905
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03392905