title: Naming and categorization in young children: vocal tact training.
abstract: In three experiments, 2- to 4-year-old children, following pretraining with everyday objects, were presented with arbitrary stimuli of differing shapes. In Experiment 1A, 9 subjects were trained one common tact response, "zag," to three of these and a second tact, "vek," to another three. In category match-to-sample Test 1, 4 subjects sorted accurately when required only to look at the sample before selecting from five comparisons. The remaining 5 subjects succeeded in Test 2, in which they were required to tact the sample before selecting comparisons. Experiment 1B showed, for 2 of these subjects, that tact training with 12 arbitrary stimuli established two six-member classes that were still intact 6 weeks later. In Experiment 2, 3 new subjects participated in a common tact training procedure that ensured that none of the exemplars from the same class were presented together prior to the test for three-member classes. Two subjects passed category Test 1 and the third passed Test 2. Tests showed subjects' listener behavior in response to hearing /zog/ and /vek/ to be in place. These experiments indicate that common naming is effective in establishing arbitrary stimulus classes and that category match-to-sample testing provides a robust measure of categorization.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, United Kingdom. c.f.lowe@bangor.ac.uk
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Fergus Lowe
authors.forename: Pauline J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Horne
authors.forename: Fay D A
authors.initials: FD
authors.lastname: Harris
authors.forename: Valerie R L
authors.initials: VR
authors.lastname: Randle
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010700:Phonetics; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D012660:Semantics; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014706:Verbal Learning