TRAINING PRESCHOOL CHILDREN TO USE VISUAL IMAGINING AS A PROBLEM-SOLVING STRATEGY FOR COMPLEX CATEGORIZATION TASKS

• Published in: Journal of applied behavior analysis Vol. 44; no. 2; pp. 255 - 278
• Main Authors: Kisamore, April N., Carr, James E., LeBlanc, Linda A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2011; Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior; The Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
• Subjects: Animals; Associative Learning; Behavior; Biological and medical sciences; Child; Child development; Child psychology; Child, Preschool; Children & youth; Classification; Cues; Developmental psychology; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Imagination; Intellectual disabilities; intraverbals; Learning - physiology; Male; mediating response; Neuropsychological Tests; Photic Stimulation; Preschool Children; Problem Solving; Problem Solving - physiology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reinforcement; Responses; tact training; Teaching; Training; Verbal Stimuli; visual imagining; Visualization; Human; Preschool age; Visual imagery; Task complexity; Cognition; intraverbals; Learning; Acquisition process; visual imagining; Problem solving; tact training; Perception; Strategy; mediating response; Categorization; Child; problem solving
• ISSN: 0021-8855; 1938-3703
• DOI: 10.1901/jaba.2011.44-255

It has been suggested that verbally sophisticated individuals engage in a series of precurrent behaviors (e.g., covert intraverbal behavior, grouping stimuli, visual imagining) to solve problems such as answering questions (Palmer, 1991; Skinner, 1953). We examined the effects of one problem solving strategy—visual imagining—on increasing responses to intraverbal categorization questions. Participants were 4 typically developing preschoolers between the ages of 4 and 5 years. Visual imagining training was insufficient to produce a substantial increase in target responses. It was not until the children were prompted to use the visual imagining strategy that a large and immediate increase in the number of target responses was observed. The number of prompts did not decrease until the children were given a rule describing the use of the visual imagining strategy. Within‐session response patterns indicated that none of the children used visual imagining prior to being prompted to do so and that use of the strategy continued after introduction of the rule. These results were consistent for 3 of 4 children. Within‐session response patterns suggested that the 4th child occasionally imagined when prompted to do so, but the gains were not maintained. The results are discussed in terms of Skinner's analysis of problem solving and the development of visual imagining.