The influence of pure tacts and intraverbals on the transfer of verbal learning to new stimuli: An experimental study in children.

This study investigates learning transfer processes in the teaching of pure tacts and intraverbals within the context of verbal behavior. The objectives were: to assess whether training pure tacts and intraverbals, through the inclusion of different stimuli, facilitates learning transfer to new impure tacts, and to determine whether one of these verbal operants (pure tact or intraverbal) better promotes learning transfer. The sample included 54 children aged 11-12 years, using a within-subjects experimental design with pre-post measures. The research was divided into 17 phases and six cycles, with two levels of the independent variable: (1) different stimuli in pure tacts and same in intraverbals, and (2) same stimuli in pure tacts and different in intraverbals. The presentation order was counterbalanced to control for order effects in training. Analyses using repeated-measures ANOVAs revealed that while participants could learn with either type of training, the training of pure tacts facilitated a greater learning transfer toward new impure tacts. In fact, training with pure tacts significantly increased the accuracy of responses in impure tact tests compared to intraverbal training, promoting greater generalization of learning (Pure tacts: M = 80.25%; SD = 4.04; F(1,26) = 5.44, p = .028, ηp² = .173; Intraverbals: M = 51.54%; SD = 3.65; F(1,26) = 8.33, p = .008, ηp² = .243). This finding suggests that pure tacts play a key role in promoting generative behavior, allowing the acquisition of new behavioral repertoires without explicit instruction. Theoretically, this study contributes to isolating the effect of pure tacts in learning transfer, while, practically, it offers relevant educational strategies to improve learning in populations with verbal and cognitive developmental limitations.