Abstract
Recent laboratory studies have been unsuccessful in demonstrating the facilitative role of the echoic in the emergence of tacts following stimulus pairing procedures. We used an adapted alternating treatments’ design to assess the emergence of tacts after four typically developing children were exposed to simultaneous presentations of pictures and their names while either requiring an echoic response, an incompatible response or instructed them to be quiet. Sessions were conducted in a way to closely resemble typical parent-child interactions (i.e., participants’ homes, fictional characters presented in booklets, play and rapport-building sessions, and interspersed reinforcement throughout). For three out of the four participants, 100% accurate responding in tact probes occurred sooner after stimulus pairing conditions in which they could engage in echoic responses, compared to when they were prevented from echoing during stimulus pairing. The results seem to support a facilitative role of the echoic in the emergence of tacts. Thus, the findings have important implications for practitioners who program for the acquisition of language and communication skills in populations who may experience deficits in this area.