Assessing the effectiveness of tact and listener training with two-element stimuli in foreign language acquisition

• Grant number: 18/03718-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: May 01, 2018
• End date: February 29, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: Mariéle de Cássia Diniz Cortez
• Grantee: Mayara da Silva Ferreira
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 14/50909-8 - INCT 2014: Behavior, Cognition and Teaching (INCT-ECCE): relational learning and symbolic functioning, AP.TEM

Abstract

Some studies have assessed how some teaching procedures may favor the acquisition of intraverbal repertoire related to foreign language learning in children. The present study will aim to 1) assess the effectiveness of tact and listener trainings, with two-element stimuli (object and color) organized in matrix, in emergence of bidirectional intraverbal responses (English-Portuguese and Portuguese-English) and, 2) verify the trainings effectiveness in producing generalization and recombination between pairs of elements. The participants will be six children with typical development, ranging from 6 to 10 years old. The experimental conditions will be 1) Pre-training test, which will assess the initial children's tact, listener and intraverbal repertoire about the stimuli sets (colors and objects); 2) Tact training: step 1 is color teaching, in which the experimenter will present a visual stimulus (card with a color) and will request the color naming in English and step 2 is object + color teaching, similar to step 1, but using two-element visual stimuli (object + color); 3) Listener training: step 1 is color teaching, in which the child must point out the corresponding color (in a 3-card arrangement) to the word in English vocalized by the experimenter and step 2 is object + color teaching, which will be done the same way as step 1, but using two-element stimuli (object + color); 4) Post-training test: which will verify the emergence of bidirectional intraverbal responses (English - Portuguese and Portuguese - English) and 5) Generalization Test of Bidirectional Intraverbal Responses: which will assess the recombination among objects and color names that were not directly taught. Data will be analyzed concerning the number of correct answers throughout all the experimental conditions accounting for the teaching procedure type that was used. (AU)