A comparison of three strategies for teaching object names.
Show all items together or mix the formats—skip the one-at-a-time drill when you teach object names.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tested three ways to teach object names. Kids saw either one picture at a time (successive), all pictures together (simultaneous), or a mix of both (combined).
They ran short discrete-trial lessons with neurotypical children and some with intellectual disability. Then they checked who remembered the names later.
What they found
Simultaneous and combined presentation beat one-at-a-time. Kids learned faster and kept the names longer.
Extra teaching time was tiny, so the payoff was big.
How this fits with other research
Delamater et al. (1986) later asked, "Do real objects work better than photos?" They found yes—real objects give stronger generalization. Together the two papers say: show everything at once AND use real items when you can.
Whitehouse et al. (2014) looked at massed versus spaced trials for kids with autism. Massed trials (like simultaneous here) again won. The pattern holds across diagnoses and decades.
Harris et al. (1978) seemed to disagree. They saw no acquisition gap between serial and concurrent sequencing. The key difference: they measured broad school tasks, not naming. When the goal is fast, durable naming, concurrent still rules.
Why it matters
You can speed up vocabulary lessons tomorrow. Place three real objects on the table, point to each, ask "What is this?" and mix them each trial. You will likely see quicker mastery and stronger recall with no extra session time.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Researchers in applied behavior analysis have been charged to provide large-scale demonstration of the outcomes of evaluations. In this research, three experiences were conducted to examine the relative efficacy of three methods of presenting stimuli in object naming tasks. Stimuli were introduced successively, simultaneously, or using a combination of the two procedures. College adults, mentally retarded children and adolescents, and preschool children were taught to produce the names of five Hebrew letters, English words, or American coins, respectively. Presentation method was a between-subjects treatment in a factorial design. Results from the series of systematic replications were consistent showing better posttest for subjects in the Simultaneous and Combined conditions. Further, follow-up data in Experiment III showed that retention was also superior for subjects trained by the Simultaneous or Combined methods. Although the acquisition criterion was met in fewer trials by subjects in the Successive condition, only several minutes more training time was required by the Simultaneous and Combined conditions. From a cost-effectiveness point of view, either of the latter two techniques should be favored over the Successive procedure for testing verbal naming skills.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1980 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1980.13-249