Effects of blocking echoic responses on tact emergence following stimulus pairing

ABSTRACT We evaluated the effect of interfering with echoic responses during stimulus pairing on preschool-age children’s responses in tact probes. During stimulus pairing, children viewed presentations of national flags paired with the spoken names of the corresponding countries. In the echoic condition, participants were required to vocally repeat each name as it was presented. In the blocking condition, participants were required to perform the presumed incompatible response of labeling the color of the background on which the flag was presented. In a third condition, there was no response requirement. Emergent vocal tacting of flag stimuli was evaluated in probes. Four of five participants’ behavior during stimulus pairing was affected by the experimental manipulation, but tact emergence varied across participants and conditions and seemed unrelated to the manipulation. The results are congruent with other research on the functional role of the echoic in emergent tacting.