The Tact is Being Emitted by the Child: Replicating and Extending Parity Research with English-Speaking, Typically Developing Children.
Model a passive sentence, let the child echo it, and you will hear more passives right away—even without praise or tokens.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with preschoolers who speak English and have no diagnosis. They wanted to see if simply hearing passive-voice sentences would make the kids say similar ones later.
Some kids only heard the model. Others heard it and then copied it out loud. No praise or candy was given for correct answers.
What they found
Eight out of ten children started using passive frames after the sessions. The group that both heard and copied the model used more passives than the hear-only group.
The skill showed up without any direct reinforcement, pointing to automatic reinforcement from sounding like the model.
How this fits with other research
Bondy (1982) saw the same thing with marble-dropping: once kids first learned a move with praise, later modeling could not budge them. Samantha et al. show the opposite—modeling alone was enough when no prior trained response blocked it.
Palmer (2023) argues that grammar grows through these very autoclitic frames. The new data give him real preschool evidence that passive frames can be strengthened by echoic practice alone.
Frampton et al. (2017) found tact training beats listener drills for kids with autism. Samantha et al. extend that idea to grammar in typical kids—model-and-imitate is the faster tact route here too.
Why it matters
You now have a quick, low-prep way to boost complex grammar. Next time you want passives—or any new frame—model the sentence once and have the child echo it. Drop the echo if time is tight; keep it if you want the strongest burst. No extra reinforcement needed, so you can weave this into natural play or story time tomorrow.
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Join Free →Pick one target passive frame ('The car is being washed'). Say it once, have the child repeat, then keep the activity moving—count new passives for five minutes.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Parity is one source of automatic reinforcement that increases the probability of verbal behavior that conforms to models provided by the verbal community. Parity as a conditioned reinforcer could explain the acquisition of grammar in the absence of direct, explicit reinforcement. This possibility has been explored in previous research on children's use of tacts with passive-voice autoclitic frames. In this study, we assessed the effects of modeling on the emission of passive-voice autoclitic frames using a pre- and post-test design with multiple training and testing phases. Thirteen children, aged 3 to 5 years, participated in the study and were randomly assigned to either a control, model-only, or model-plus-vocal-imitation group. None of the participants in the control group emitted tacts with passive-voice autoclitic frames. Eighty percent of the participants in the model-only and model-plus-vocal-imitation groups emitted passive-voice autoclitic frames, but the degree of change varied across participants. We measured whether participants attempted to echo the experimenter's passive-voice model in training, and participants in the model-only condition were much more likely to echo the model than participants in the model-plus-vocal-imitation group; nevertheless, participants in the model-plus-vocal-imitation group emitted more tacts with passive-voice autoclitic frames during testing phases. We discuss the results and mechanisms, including parity, which may account for these differences.
The Analysis of verbal behavior, 2024 · doi:10.1007/BF03393036