Further evaluation of general and descriptive praise statements on the acquisition of tacts

Cortes and team coached parents to run short tact lessons over Zoom with their toddlers.

Each child got three kinds of praise: general (“Nice!”), descriptive (“Nice car!”), or a mix.

The researchers counted how many trials each toddler needed to name new pictures correctly.

All praise styles worked at the same speed.

Switching between “Good job” and “Good job saying dog” did not change how fast the kids learned the new names.

Mouridsen et al. (2002) showed that adding a mand turn (“What do you want?”) before the tact speeds learning. Their study changed the teaching step itself, while Cortes kept the step the same and only swapped praise words.

Tamrazi et al. (2023) also taught tacts over telehealth. They found that giving no praise (omission) hurts less than giving wrong praise (commission). Cortes agrees: any correct praise is fine, but wrong praise is still risky.

Devine et al. (2022) tried extra observing tasks during tact trials and saw little gain. Like Cortes, they learned that small add-ons often don’t help neurotypical toddlers—keep the core lesson simple.

You can stop worrying about the exact praise script. Use the words that feel natural to you, stay accurate, and focus on clear models and quick trials. Save your planning time for bigger levers like set size or mand-tact sequences.