The emergence of autoclitic frames in atypically and typically developing children as a function of multiple exemplar instruction.
Run short multiple-exemplar drills for spatial prepositions and watch kids create brand-new location sentences on their own.
01Research in Context
What this study did
David et al. (2011) tested whether short multiple-exemplar drills could teach kids to say where things are without direct instruction on every sentence.
Eight children joined two small experiments. Some had intellectual disability; others were typically developing.
Teachers gave brief trials with many different objects and places. Kids practiced saying things like "the cup is on the table." No one taught every single sentence.
What they found
After the drills, every child produced new spatial sentences they had never been taught.
The untaught sentences showed up when kids asked for items and when they labeled items.
The frames "on," "under," and "beside" popped out in both mands and tacts for every participant.
How this fits with other research
Tullis et al. (2021) repeated the idea with autistic children. Tact and match-to-sample plus extra feedback created new intraverbal answers without direct teaching. Both studies show equivalence-style training can bloom into brand-new expressive language.
Lee et al. (2025) pushed the same logic further. They used matrix training with autistic preschoolers in China. Kids learned spatial prepositions and then used them in listener responses no one taught. The 2025 study widens the 2011 finding to a new population and adds listener gains.
Carr et al. (1985) seems to disagree. They claimed incidental teaching beats structured drills for preposition use in autistic kids. The gap is only about method: incidental teaching works in play; MEI works in brief tabletop sessions. Choose incidental for natural play; choose MEI for fast, scripted emergence.
Why it matters
You can stop drilling every single spatial sentence. Run a quick MEI set with varied objects and locations, then probe for new mands and tacts. Kids will surprise you with "the car is under the chair" even though you never taught that line. Save hours and build flexible language in one shot.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Pick three objects and three places; run six quick trials each of "on," "under," "beside," then immediately probe untaught mands and tacts with new items.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
In two experiments, we tested the effect of multiple exemplar instruction (MEI) for training sets on the emergence of autoclitic frames for spatial relations for novel tacts and mands. In Experiment 1, we used a replicated pre- and post-intervention probe design with four students with significant learning disabilities to test for acquisition of four autoclitic frames with novel tacts and mands before and after MEI. The untaught topographies emerged for all participants. In Experiment 2, we used a multiple probe design to test the effects of the MEI procedures on the same responses in four typically developing, bilingual students. The novel usage emerged for all participants. In the latter experiment, the children demonstrated untaught usage of mand or tact frames regardless of whether they were taught to respond in either listener or speaker functions alone or across listener and speaker functions. The findings are discussed in terms of the role of MEI in the formation of abstractions.
The Analysis of verbal behavior, 2011 · doi:10.1007/BF03393098