Emergence of intraverbals after reading a text: learning principles involved in reading comprehension

ABSTRACT We studied the effect of learning two symmetrical verbal relations in areading comprehension task. We explored emergence of intraverbals after 7- and 8-year-old children read ashort text with sentences in which a word A was related to B and B to C(e.g., “Argentina,” “Buenos Aires,” and “El Botánico”). Thereafter, all ABC intraverbal combinations (e.g., C-A– “Name the country of El Botánico”) were probed without reinforcement with written stimuli and responses. In Experiments 1 and 2, seven of 12 children demonstrated the emergence of all intraverbals. In Experiments 3 and 4, 6 experimentally naïve children and the five children who failed to demonstrate the emergence of all intraverbals learned first simpler, symmetrical intraverbals (e.g., that acountry is Argentina and that Argentina is acountry). All 11 children immediately demonstrated the emergence of all ABC intraverbals. Thus, results evidence reading comprehension facilitated by learning symmetrical intraverbals.