Emergent verbal behavior in preschool children learning a second language

Three preschoolers who only spoke English learned Spanish words.

The kids got listener training: hear "gato" and touch the cat picture.

They also got intraverbal training: hear "¿Qué es?" and say "gato."

No one ever asked them to name the picture in Spanish or to touch it when they heard the word.

After the short lessons, every child could suddenly do the untaught skills.

They could see the cat and say "gato" (a new tact).

They could also hear "gato" and touch the cat (a new listener response).

These skills popped out without any extra teaching.

Cortez et al. (2020) ran almost the same study and saw the same burst of new skills.

They added a twist: they compared tact-first versus listener-first teaching.

Tact-first won; kids learned more words faster.

So May plus Cortez shows the emergence is real, and tact-first is the quicker road.

Schroeder et al. (2014) reminds us to probe the opposite relation right after we teach one.

That quick check lets us see the emergence and stop drilling what the child already knows.

You can cut teaching time in half when you let emergence do part of the job.

Start with tact training: have the child say the new Spanish word for the picture.

Then probe the listener response: say the word and see if the child touches the picture.

If the child gets it right, skip that step and move on.

This saves minutes every trial and builds bigger vocabularies faster for any bilingual learner on your caseload.