Producing generative sentence usage by imitation and reinforcement procedures.
Model a sentence, reinforce the copy, and watch new correct sentences appear—no extra drills needed.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with five young children. Some had developmental delays. Others were typical talkers.
Adults modeled short subject-verb sentences like "The dog runs." When a child copied the sentence, the adult gave praise and small toys. This mix of imitation and reinforcement continued in short daily sessions.
The researchers tracked how often each child said new, untrained sentences on their own.
What they found
Four of the five children began saying correct sentences they had never practiced. The new sentences showed up while the kids were still being trained on old ones.
This means the teaching package created generative language. The children were not just parroting. They were building fresh, grammatical sentences by themselves.
How this fits with other research
Neuringer et al. (1968) got a quiet preschooler to talk more by giving toys only after speech. R et al. added imitation models and showed that reinforcement can also spark brand-new sentence forms.
Nangle et al. (1993) later showed that preschoolers need direct training to answer questions, even after they can name pictures. Together the three studies warn: reinforcement grows language, but each verbal skill may need its own teaching plan.
Mueller et al. (2000) found the same generative leap in kindergarteners learning to read. Minimal training with overlapping letter sets let kids pick out new printed words. The pattern holds across speaking and reading: teach a few examples well, and children combine the pieces on their own.
Why it matters
You can jump-start flexible grammar in young clients by modeling a sentence and then praising or playing when they copy it. Start with just two or three subject-verb pairs. Watch for new sentences that mix the old words in new ways. When that happens, reinforce immediately. This low-prep procedure works for late-talking toddlers and children with developmental delays, giving you a quick route to generative language without extra apps or materials.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Pick one subject-verb pair, model it, and give a tiny toy or praise the moment the child imitates—track any new sentences that pop up.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Three retarded subjects and two developmentally normal toddlers were trained using imitation and reinforcement procedures to use correct sentences. The experimental task was to use sentences with correct subject-verb agreement to describe pictures that were presented to the subjects. Two classes of sentences were taught: those involving a plural subject that required the use of the verb "are" (for example, "the boys are running") and those involving a singular subject that required the use of the verb "is" (for example, "the boy is running"). The basic design of the study involved multiple baselines for each class of sentences. Four of the subjects began to produce novel, untrained sentences of a particular type to generalization probe pictures when that particular class of sentence was currently being trained. Thus, the imitation and reinforcement procedures appeared to be functional in producing generative sentence usage for both types of sentences. One subject produced correct sentences to both singular and plural probe pictures when only "is" sentences had been taught. A reversal procedure and retraining phase indicated that for this subject, imitation and reinforcement procedures for training one class of sentence behavior seemed functional in producing generative responses of the other class of sentences.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1974 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1974.7-447