Exemplars and Categories Necessary for the Emergence of Intraverbals About Transitive Reasoning in Typically Developing Children

This research aimed to explore the effect of teaching Categories on the emergence of the intraverbals studied by P,rez-Gonzalez, Herszlikowicz, and Williams (The Psychological Record 58;95--129, 2008). Ten 6- and 7-year-old children were recruited and divided into 2 conditions. In Condition 1, 5 children learned intraverbals in which they had to say exemplars of 3 categories (e.g., "Name a continent"aEuro"aEuroeEurope")-the Exemplars. They also learned intraverbals in which they had to say the categories of the exemplars named by the experimenter (e.g., "What is Europe"aEuro"aEuroeA continent")-the Categories. Thereafter, they learned to say the countries corresponding to two cities (the A-B relations) and to say the continents of the two countries (the B-C relations). Finally, the intraverbals that result from combining A, B, and, C stimuli were probed, such as asking the cities corresponding to the continents. Five children in Condition 2 received the same experience, but they did not learn the Categories initially. Four of the 5 children of Condition 1 demonstrated the emergence of all probed ABC intraverbals, but no child of Condition 2 did so initially. These results indicate that learning Categories together with the Exemplars plays a strong role in the emergence of the probed ABC intraverbals. These findings reveals some basic learning processes involved in reasoning processes, such as transitive inference.