A preliminary investigation of the consequences that define the mand and the tact.

The team compared two ways to teach sign language. One group got what they asked for right away. The other group got praise but not the item.

They timed how fast each adult with intellectual disability signed and counted how many signs they chose to use.

Specific reinforcement won. Signs came faster and were picked more often when the reinforcer matched the request.

Praise-only kept the behavior, but it was slower and less frequent.

Hansen et al. (1989) pushed the idea further. They showed that teaching labels first does not create requests. You need extra transfer steps to turn a tact into a mand.

Magat et al. (2022) repeated the pattern with adults who had brain injury. Mand training gave the biggest boost to untrained tacts, echoing the 1988 speed edge.

Majdalany et al. (2016) looked at delay instead of type. Even a six-second wait slowed tact learning, so both timing and kind of reinforcer matter.

When you run mand trials, give the real item right away. Save praise for extra sparkle, not the main course. This tiny swap can cut latency and raise response rate in your next session.