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Naming and verbal generalisation
of behaviour. J. CarL Hughes, C. Fergus Lowe and Pauline J. Horne University of Wales, Wales Naming (Horne and Lowe, 1996) is a bi-directional relation that gives rise to what some researchers have termed "emergent" behaviour but here is considered to be verbal generalisation of behaviour. This study investigated verbal generalisation in 17 two to four year-olds. Six arbitrary stimuli were used, three designated to be "zogs" and three to be "veks". In one of two conditions, children underwent Common Tact or Common Listener training with 3 stimulus pairs, each consisting of one zog and one vek. Common Tact training consisted of the child making the correct vocal response (i.e., either "zog" or "vek"); listener behaviour test trials were then introduced to test for untrained listener relations. Common Listener training consisted of the child selecting the correct shape when presented with the auditory stimulus (i.e., either /zog/ or /vek/ ); tact test trials were then introduced to test for untrained speaker relations. Then, in both conditions, children were trained to emit a novel behaviour (e.g., clapping) to one zog and another behaviour (e.g., waving) to one vek. Generalisation Test 1 tested whether the remaining shapes would also control similar behaviours. Generalisation Test 2 tested selection of the stimuli after seeing the experimenter model the behaviours. There were seven children in the Common Tact condition; all showed untrained listener relations, that is, naming. When tested, all showed generalisation of the novel behaviour. Of the 10 children in the Common Listener condition, 8 showed untrained speaker relations, that is, naming. When tested, all showed generalisation of the novel behaviour. The remaining two children in this condition failed to show speaker relations, and hence naming; they also failed the generalisation tests. These results are consistent with Horne and Lowe's naming theory. Keywords: naming, verbal generalisation, tact, listener behaviour, categorisation |
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