Training generative verb usage by imitation and reinforcement procedures.
A handful of imitation trials can create full, correct verb tenses that spread to brand-new words.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with adults who had intellectual disability.
They used short, clear trials.
The adult copied the trainer’s sentence and got praise or a token.
The goal was past and present verb forms like "walked" and "walks."
They tracked three verb sets in a row to see if the skill spread.
What they found
After a few short sessions the adults used new, untrained verbs correctly.
The right tense popped up even with verbs that had never been drilled.
The skill jumped from one verb group to the next without extra teaching.
How this fits with other research
Curiel et al. (2020) saw the same spread with clock times.
They taught 12 times and the adults correctly read about half of 132 new times.
Both studies show that tight drill plus praise can build a whole new skill set.
Meier et al. (2012) found a similar leap in children with autism.
They taught either mand or tact and the other operant appeared on its own.
Together the papers tell one story: train a few examples and watch the rest bloom.
Why it matters
You can save hours of teaching time.
Pick a tiny set of verbs, drill with imitation and praise, then probe untrained words.
If tense comes out right, move on to the next language goal instead of drilling every single verb.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Three retarded children were trained, using imitation and reinforcement procedures, to produce past and present tense forms of verbs in response to verbal requests. Two types of experimental sessions were arranged: training sessions and probe sessions. During training sessions, a child was trained to produce one verb in both the past and the present tense. Then, in a probe session, the generalization of this training was tested by presenting to the child a series of untrained verbs interspersed with previously trained verbs. Responses to untrained verbs were never reinforced. Training sessions alternated with probe sessions throughout a multiple baseline design involving four classes of verb inflections as the baselines. The results showed that, as past and present tense forms of verbs within an inflectional class were trained, the children correctly produced past and present tense forms of untrained verbs within this class. When verbs from two or more classes were trained, the children correctly produced the verb tenses from each of these classes. Thus, the imitation and reinforcement procedures were effective in teaching generative use of verb inflections.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1970 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1970.3-273