Acquisition of arbitrary conditional discriminations by young normally developing children.

The team worked with preschool kids who did not have disabilities.

They wanted to see if giving simple names and clear rules would help the kids learn tricky picture matches.

Kids got blocks of trials. Some only got praise for right picks. Others also heard the teacher say a silly name for each sample picture.

The kids who heard the names and rules learned the matches much faster.

Reinforcement alone was not enough for most of them.

Naming plus blocked trials made the new skill stick with fewer errors.

Foster et al. (1979) showed that shaping beats fading, but their kids had no extra names or rules. C et al. added words and got even cleaner learning.

Reynolds et al. (1968) found fading helped on simple tasks yet hurt later hard ones. C et al. show that adding language, not just fading, fixes that transfer problem.

Neves et al. (2023) later used errorless exclusion with deaf children learning sentences. Their low-error pattern matches what C et al. saw, proving the trick works across populations and tougher content.

If you teach conditional discriminations, give the learner a quick label for each sample and state the rule out loud. Use short blocks of the same trial type before mixing. This cuts errors and speeds mastery in typically developing kids, and the same logic now helps children with hearing loss learn full sentences. Try it next time you run matching-to-sample or equivalence lessons.