The Functional Relation Between the Onset of Naming and the Joining of Listener to Untaught Speaker Responses

In Experiment I, the experimenter selected 13 developmentally delayed preschool students without Naming to test for speaker and listener vocabularies. This affirmed the independence of speaker and listener vocabularies, as evidenced by a significantly larger listener vocabulary than speaker vocabulary. Six participants were selected from Experiment I to participate in Experiment II. None of the participants had the full Naming capability at the onset of the study. Multiple exemplar instruction across speaker and listener responses was implemented to induce Naming in these participants. A non-concurrent multiple probe design across participants was implemented to test for the emergence of speaker responses for stimuli the participants could only respond to as a listener prior to the acquisition of Naming. Within this design was a nested non-concurrent multiple probe design to test the effect of multiple exemplar instruction on the induction of Naming. Following the acquisition of Naming the experimenter re-tested listener and speaker responses finding that the participants could respond as a speaker to the stimuli they previously could only respond to as a listener. Five of six participants acquired approximately 70% or greater untaught responses following the acquisition of Naming. One participant acquired approximately 30% of untaught speaker responses following the acquisition of Naming.