Effects of the order of exposure to high and low preference stimulus sets on teaching a small vocabulary in second language

Abstract

This study will evaluate whether the order of exposure to high and low preference stimulus sets during a tact instruction in a foreign language will affect the learning curve acceleration of tacts and the emergence of bidirectional intraverbal responses (portuguese-spanish and spanish-portuguese). Six typically developing children, aged seven to nine years, will participate. Initially, a preference assessment will be conducted to select the high and low preference stimulus sets. Tact and bidirectional intraverbal probes will be conducted prior, during and after tact instruction in order to evaluate tact acquisition (say [Spanish word] in the presence of the corresponding visual stimulus) and the emergence of bidirectional intraverbal responses (say the foreign word equivalent to the nativeword and vice-versa) for both sets of stimulus (high and low preference). During tact instruction, the experimenter will present a visual stimulus to the child and ask "What is this in Spanish?" using a progressive prompt delay (0s, 2s and 4s). Half of the participants will be first exposed to the tact instruction with the low preferred stimulus set and then to the high preferred stimulus set. The other half will be exposed to the opposite order. A multiple probes design will be used for evaluating the effects of tact instruction using high and low preference stimulus sets on the emergence of bidirectional intraverbal responses. The results will be evaluated comparing each stimulus sets and the order of exposure in relation to the number of trials until reaching the learning criteria, the learning curve acceleration and, the number of correct responses in the bidirectional intraverbal probes.