Effects of letter-identification training on letter naming in prereading children.

Hayashi et al. (2013) worked with three prereading children who could not yet name letters. The kids first learned to pick the correct printed letter when an adult said the letter name. No one asked them to say the name out loud.

Sessions used simple matching-to-sample. The teacher said 'This is B' and the child touched the B card. Correct picks earned praise or stickers.

After the children could reliably select letters on hearing the names, all three began to say the names themselves. Naming popped out without any extra tact training.

The study showed that teaching the selection response alone was enough to create the spoken naming response.

Williams et al. (2005) saw the same emergent naming in preschoolers, but they used 3-D objects and started with tact-selection. Yusuke flips the order: start with pure selection and watch naming appear.

Oliver et al. (2002) taught toddlers to tact one name for several shapes and also got emergent stimulus classes. Together the three studies say 'train one verbal relation, get others for free' in young neurotypical kids.

Putnam et al. (2016) later repeated the logic with braille-to-print matching in adults. Once again, match-to-sample alone produced untrained reading and writing, showing the effect holds across ages and modalities.

If you need a child to name letters, try teaching them to select the letter when they hear the name first. In many cases the spoken name will emerge on its own, saving you precious session time. Keep probes brief; if naming appears after a few selection lessons, you can move straight to fluency or comprehension goals.