Teaching children naming through computerized multiple exemplar instruction protocol

• Grant number: 19/01247-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2019
• End date: September 30, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Deisy das Graças de Souza
• Grantee: Gustavo Magro Krüger
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Scientific evidence suggests that the listener and speaker repertoires initially develop independently and get integrated as the child develops. Both repertoires and their integration are essential to the acquisition of language. When a child listens to a word that indicates an aspect of the environment and then says the same word in order to refer to it, this behaviour indicates that this child has developed naming, a generalized behavioural operant. Children with delayed development may strive to acquire naming. A protocol used to teach naming is the Multiple Exemplar Instruction (MEI), that allows the establishment of conjunct stimulus control over responding, being possible for the stimuli to be of different modalities. Previous studies using MEI have teached naming successfully, but the protocol have always been managed by the experimenter, what is potentially damaging for the experimental control. There is also almost no national studies that use MEI in order to teach naming. In the present study the aim is to verify the efficiency of the computerized application of MEI with Brazilian children who have presented low levels of naming and take a long time to acquire new name-object relations.