The role of intraverbal bidirectional naming in the establishment of comparative relations
Adults need explicit tact and intraverbal practice before bigger-smaller relations emerge, so add naming drills if derived performances fail.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Luoma et al. (2024) worked with adults who could already talk. They wanted to see if the adults could learn bigger-smaller relations without being taught each pair.
First they gave conditional-discrimination drills with pictures and nonsense words. Some pairs showed real size gaps (non-arbitrary). Other pairs were random (arbitrary).
When emergent comparisons did not pop up, they added tact and intraverbal lessons. The adults had to name the items and answer questions like 'Which one is bigger?'
What they found
The adults only showed the new bigger-smaller choices after the extra tact and intraverbal training. The talking part was the key.
This fits the idea of intraverbal bidirectional naming: you can hear the relation and then say it, or say it and then hear it.
How this fits with other research
Zhirnova et al. (2025) asked the same question with preschool kids and analogical relations. They also saw that once children could both name and listen for the relation, new analogies emerged without more drills. The child data extend the adult finding to a younger group and a new relation type.
Bruns et al. (2004) saw the same gap in toddlers. Listener-only training left most kids unable to sort arbitrary pictures. Adding tact training fixed it. Luoma et al. repeat the pattern two decades later with adults and comparisons instead of categories.
Paranczak et al. (2024) got derived relations in children after only a few minutes of discrete-trial work and no extra tact drills. Their kids were already strong speakers, so the verbal layer may have been in place. Luoma’s adults needed the added language step, showing that verbal skill, not age, predicts when you can skip the extra naming.
Why it matters
If you run equivalence lessons and the learner is not showing emergent comparisons, do not keep repeating the same match-to-sample trials. Add quick tact and intraverbal probes: have the learner label 'bigger' or 'smaller' and answer questions out loud. Once the words are solid, test the relation again. This saves time and avoids needless drill.
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Join Free →After two failed probes for emergent comparisons, run five tact trials ('What size is this?') and five intraverbal trials ('Which one is bigger?') then retest.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The purpose of the current study was to extend the research on the possible role of verbal mediation in the establishment of comparative relations. We conducted four experiments in which 14 participants received conditional discrimination training with nonarbitrary and arbitrary stimuli, followed by derived comparative and transformation of function tests. Participants learned to select the smallest or biggest comparison across multiple exemplars in the presence of abstract samples. Next, participants learned to select arbitrary comparisons in the presence of contextual cues to establish a size ranking among comparisons. To assess verbal mediation during mutual and combinatorial entailment tests, participants were instructed to talk out loud. When they failed to perform correctly during derived relations tests, participants were trained to tact and intraverbally relate stimuli. The results suggest that relational training alone was not sufficient to establish comparative relations and that adult participants engaged in problem solving consistent with intraverbal bidirectional naming during emergent relations tests.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2024 · doi:10.1002/jeab.4207