Further evidence of automatic reinforcement effects on verbal form
Kids keep using a grammar form when it matches what they just heard, even if you praise a different form.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Dal Ben et al. (2019) asked if preschoolers keep using a grammar form just because it sounds right.
They modeled passive voice ("The car was hit by the truck").
Then they praised kids for using the opposite form.
They tracked if the kids still said passives anyway.
What they found
Kids kept using passive voice even when adults praised active voice.
Their own matching sounds acted like built-in reinforcement.
How this fits with other research
Vollmer et al. (1996) showed that infants babble more when they hear happy sounds. Dal Ben moves this idea up to preschool grammar.
Sainsbury (1971) proved that any cue paired with goodies becomes its own reward. The passive echo works the same way.
Rojahn et al. (1994) tested how adult words shape echoes in autism. Dal Ben mirrors the method in neurotypical kids, but for grammar instead of echolalia.
Why it matters
Your praise may not override a form that already "sounds good" to the child. If you want a new grammar form to stick, first let the child hear lots of clear models. Only then add praise or tokens. This saves you from fighting automatic reinforcement with extra work.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The form of a verbal response allows for reinforcement mediation and language transmission across cultures. Reinforcement, in turn, plays a decisive role in learning verbal forms. The present work addresses methodological limitations of previous studies, providing further evidence of the role of automatic reinforcement in achieving parity with vocal models. In the first experiment, 4 preschool-age children heard the experimenter describe drawings of different actions in the passive voice. Participants were then asked to describe analogous drawings. They used the passive voice after the model was presented and continued to do so even when preferred explicit consequences followed diverging descriptions (i.e., in the active voice). To further investigate the effects of explicit reinforcement and of the passive-voice model, in Experiment 2, we altered the number of trials with explicit reinforcement and with the model. Three of four participants used the passive voice to describe the drawings, despite greater exposure to explicit consequences following descriptions diverging from the model.
The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 2019 · doi:10.1007/s40616-018-0104-3