Multiple exemplar instruction and the listener half of naming in children with limited speaker abilities

The purpose of the current investigation was to teach the listener half of naming to six children with severe speech and language disorders including autism and to create a tactic for teaching a fundamental verbal capability. Two experiments tested the effects of multiple exemplar instruction (MEI) on teaching the listener component of naming, a capability that allows individuals to learn vocabulary without direct teaching. MEI procedures in these experiments used both visual and auditory antecedents for students with limited abilities as listeners and speakers who required intensive 1:1 behavioral teaching in a small classroom setting. In MEI the participants were taught to identify subsets of pictures through a series of alternating matching and pointing learn units, in which the investigator emitted the tact of the picture. The investigator "said" (say) the tact for the stimuli while the participant had to "see" or match the stimuli. This occasioned the opportunity to hear the tact for the stimuli as they matched the stimuli. The participants had to hear- see and hear- point. Upon meeting criterion in training, probes were conducted to test for the emergence of listener behavior for the sets taught in MEI. In both the pilot study and the second experiment results showed that MEI was effective in teaching a listener response for all six participants. In the second experiment an additional set of stimuli were introduced as an untaught set. The purpose of this set was to test the emergence of listener responding for untaught stimuli, a test for the listener half of naming. These probes were conducted at the beginning of the study then following the completion of each MEI training set. The listener half of naming emerged for all 3 participants. Although not directly taught nor the topic of this investigation there was an emergence of limited vocal responses for three participants across these two experiments. These results support the efficacy of MEI procedures for the development of verbal capabilities required for the listener half of naming. MEI procedures lead to the transfer of stimulus function from visual to listener responding and in a more limited demonstration, to speaker behavior.