Using a modified alternated treatment design with pretests and posttests, the scholars examined the effects of sensitivity and listener training on the establishment of bidirectional intraverbal connections with six normally developing Brazilian toddlers (Cortez et al., 2020). Participants in an auditory instruction exercise chose images that matched uttered words in a foreign tongue. Children had to pronounce foreign words as the appropriate visuals were on the screen for tact education (Cortez et al., 2020). Following the fulfillment of the requirements for mastery, bilingual intraverbal tests evaluated vocal sounds in Portuguese (the native tongue) after the introduction of the corresponding words in English, and vice versa.
It seems reasonable to state that the study demonstrated a functional relationship. It was successful in using an adjusted alternating treatment design to investigate the impact of two instructional approaches (tact and listener) on the establishment of bidirectional intraverbal interactions (Cortez et al., 2020). A within-subject examination that was not carried out in the initial study was made possible by this strategy. For establishing bidirectional intraverbal responses, tact training was more successful than listener teaching. These results agreed with the findings of scholars who used various experimental controls.
An alternative design may incorporate maintenance conditions, more generalization (e.g., probing trials carried out by other experimenters), and probing for emerging tacts after listener instructions and vice versa. To reduce participant mistakes during the initial training trials, it can also look at the efficacy of prompt delay techniques in training settings. It should also focus on increasing the number of stimuli in each setting and the total quantity of sets to evaluate training set effects and create instructional strategies to construct responses governed by a variety of stimulus components.
References
Cortez, M. D., dos Santos, L., Quintal, A. E., Silveira, M. V., & de Rose, J. C. (2020). Learning a foreign language: Effects of tact and listener instruction on the emergence of bidirectional intraverbals. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 53(1), 484–492.