Naming and categorization in young children: v. manual sign training

Abstract

Following pre-training with everyday objects, 8 children aged from 2 to 4 years learned to produce one manual sign (fists placed one above the other, in front of body) to one stimulus and an alternative manual sign (shoulders touched with ipsilateral hands) to the other stimulus, with each of three pairs of different arbitrary wooden shapes (Set 1). The six stimuli then were presented in category match-to-sample tests, which all subjects passed. Three of the children were next trained to produce the manual signs (denoted as fist/shoulder) for an additional six arbitrary stimuli, Set 2. All 3 children went on to pass category match-to-sample tests for Set 2, and for Set 1 and Set 2 combined. In the final experimental phase, 2 of the children were trained, for one of the six stimulus pairs, to produce the vocal tact "zag" to one stimulus and "vek" to the other. Both children showed category transfer of these vocalizations in test trials with each of the remaining five stimulus pairs, and all the stimuli combined in a 12-stimulus array. In line with Horne and Lowe's (1996) naming account, manual sign naming was found to be as effective as vocal naming in establishing arbitrary stimulus categorization, measured in terms of category sorting and transfer of function. The findings also have implications for the training of verbal repertoires in people with learning disabilities.

Fig 1. For each subject, number of correct category sorts to each Fist (F) and Shoulder (S) sample.

Sorting under the look-at-sample instruction is shown by gray bars for subjects who completed all 18 test trials and by gray filled circles for subjects who failed to meet criterion in the first six trials. The performances of these latter subjects on the 18 trials under the tact-sample instruction are shown by the black bars.

Fig 2. For 3 subjects, category sorting performances with a second set of arbitrary stimuli.

(See Figure 1 for details.)

Fig 3. For each of the 3 subjects, GC, LI, and PW, number of correct category sorts under the look-at-sample instruction on the Set 1 and Set 2 category match-to-sample review trials; on a random selection of six from the Set 1 and Set 2 stimuli (Random 6); and on the full 12-stimulus test combining all Set 1 and Set 2 stimuli.

Fig 4. For the 2 subjects, GC and LI, number of correct vocal tact responses in the 8-trial transfer of function test conducted with Pair 2 and Pair 3 (Set 1), Pair 4, Pair 5, and Pair 6 (Set 2), and on the 36-trial vocal behavior transfer test with all 12 arbitrary stimuli from Set 1 and Set 2.