Efeitos da ordem de exposição a conjuntos de estímulos de alta e baixa preferência no ensino de um pequeno vocabulário em segunda língua

Abstract

This study evaluated whether the order of exposure to high and low preferred stimulus sets during tact instruction in a foreign language would affect the acceleration of the tact learning curve and the emergence of native-to-foreign and foreign-to-native intraverbals (Portuguese-English and English-Portuguese). Six children aged seven to eight years participated in the study. Initially, a preference assessment was conducted to define the high and low preference of the stimuli used in the study. Tact and bidirectional intraverbal probes occurred before, during, and after tact instruction to assess tact responses (saying the name of the visual stimulus in the foreign language) and bidirectional intraverbal responses (saying the foreign word corresponding to the word in the native language and vice versa) in the presence of the stimulus sets employed. During tact instruction, the experimenter presented a visual stimulus and asked the child, "What is this called in English?" using a progressive prompt delay procedure (0s, 2s, and 4s). Half of the participants started instruction with the low preference set and then were exposed to instruction with the high preference set. The other half underwent instruction in the reverse order. A non-concurrent multiple baseline design between participants with intermediate probes of intraverbal responses was used. Four out of the six participants reached learning criteria (tact) in a smaller number of trials in the first stimulus set, regardless of the preference. For both stimulus sets, tact instruction consistently produced high levels of emergence of intraverbal responses, confirming the literature in the field. Regardless the order of exposure, participants showed higher levels of maintenance for the tact and intraverbals response for the high preference set. The results suggest the order of exposure and stimulus preference as an important variable in facilitating second language vocabulary learning.