Teachers College, Columbia University
Project Title: Enough is Enough: Comparing Teaching Opportunities to Acquire Tacts and Emergent Intraverbals
Victoria Guthrie is a PhD student at Teachers College, Columbia University, studying under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Fienup. She also earned her MA in Applied Behavior Analysis from Teachers College. Her research focuses on instructional efficiency, specifically comparing how the number of exposures may affect direct and emergent learning.
In her pilot study (under review), she compared varying doses of instructional trials and the impact on the acquisition of primary and secondary behaviors. Specifically, she examined how the number of exposures affected the pace of learning. Currently, there is minimal guidance or research evaluating the number of exposures. This is an important research question because if there is not enough exposure to instructional trials this could slow down learning. On the other hand, too many exposures may result in an unnecessary allocation of teaching resources.
Beyond measuring the acquisition of behavior under direct reinforcement contingencies, she evaluated the emergence of bidirectional intraverbals. Researchers have recently begun to explore the prerequisites required for the emergence of intraverbals (DeSouza et al., 2019). Results showed that once the participants had mastered all prerequisites (set out by Sundberg & Sundberg, 2011), they emitted the target intraverbals at mastery levels without any direct training. Similarly, Rodriguez et al. (2022) found that intraverbal tacts were emitted only after all component skills were mastered (Rodriguez et al., 2022). However, the indirect learning of intraverbals has not been systematically researched (Conine et al., 2024). Her goal was to explore if an untaught bi-directional intraverbal would emerge after teaching two tacts with the same stimulus. This emergent behavior, or derived relation, supports the overarching goal of efficiency in the classroom.
The Sidney W. and Janet R. Bijou Grant will support her dissertation, which expands on efficiency by focusing specifically on instructional intensity for elementary-aged students who are at-risk or have an educational classification. Further, the grant will fund essential technology used during assessment and intervention. Finally, the grant will assist with expenses for disseminating past, current and future findings at professional conferences.
The Sidney W. and Janet R. Bijou Grant funds provide opportunities for the acquisition of essential materials to conduct the research study and will support expenses for disseminating findings at professional conferences.
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