Abstract
The present research studied the emergence of intraverbals with antonyms (e.g., “Name the opposite of empty”–“Full”) derived from learning skills with verbal and nonverbal stimuli. Five 3-year-old children learned to select the nonverbal comparison identical to a sample stimulus or of an opposite category from the sample, with a conditional discrimination procedure (e.g., selecting an empty cup in the presence of an empty cup when the contextual stimulus was “same” and selecting a full cup when the contextual stimulus was “opposite”). Then, an intraverbal probe related to these concepts was presented (e.g., “Name the opposite of empty”–“Full”). If the participant failed in the intraverbal probe, additional skills were taught or probed, and the intraverbal probe was repeated, which included conditional discriminations with more verbal stimuli than the initial conditional discrimination (e.g., selecting a full cup when told, “Point to the opposite of ‘empty’”). All 5 children demonstrated the emergence of most or all intraverbals. Two children received the sequence with a second stimulus set; they showed the emergence of intraverbals quicker than with the first stimulus set. Thus, the emergence of intraverbals after learning relations with nonverbal stimuli was demonstrated in young children. The identification of the skills present when the intraverbals emerged suggests that learning some of these skills is required for emergence, and they may be important to understand the emergence of verbal skills.
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Notes
The English translations are presented in text with the original Spanish, because extensions with English speakers could imply functional differences between the two languages.
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Authors’ note
This research was supported by a grants BP06-108 and COF10-11 from the Fundación para el Fomento en Asturias de la Investigación Científica Aplicada y la Tecnología (FICYT), and grants SEJ2006-08055, of the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, and PSI2009-08644, of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain. This research was conducted as partial fulfillment of the doctoral dissertation of the second author under the supervision of the first author. The authors thank María Baquero, Raquel Busto, and Vanessa González for their help in recording data for interobserver agreement and the principals and teachers of the schools Lorenzo Novo Mier and Colegio Público de la Corredoria, in Oviedo, for their collaboration in the research. Portions of these data were presented at the Annual Convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis, Phoenix, USA, 2009.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Conflicts of Interest
Luis Antonio Pérez-González received grant SEJ2006-08055 from Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, Spain, and grant 009-08644 from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain.
Lorena García Asenjo received grants P06-108 & COF10-11 from Fomento en Asturias de la Investigación Científica Aplicada y la Tecnología (FICYT), Spain.
Authors Luis Antonio Pérez-González & Lorena García Asenjo declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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Informed consent was obtained from the teachers and parents of all individual participants included in the study.
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Pérez-González, L.A., García-Asenjo, L. Emergence of Intraverbals with Antonyms Derived From Relations with Verbal and Nonverbal Stimuli. Psychol Rec 66, 351–368 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-016-0177-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-016-0177-0