The Effects of Speaker Instruction and Listener Instruction on the Emergence of Bidirectional Intraverbals

The purpose of this paper was to study the effectiveness of language acquisition using speaker instruction and listener instruction and examining the emergence of bidirectional intraverbals using a non-sense language. Current research suggests that speaker type instruction is more effective in aiding untrained relations (Contreras et al., 2020; Cortez et al., 2019; Petursdottir et al., 2008). This research was extended to include the analysis of forgetting of the second language across time. Two experiments are reported in this study. Both sets of participants were neurotypical adults living in the United States, and fluent in English. An intraverbal test was administered as a baseline followed speaker and listener instruction on the intervention phase. Forgetting of speaker and listener relations was assessed after two weeks using the speaker and listener instruction conditions. It was found that speaker instruction is more effective in aiding the emergence of bidirectional intraverbals although listener instruction was acquired faster. During the maintenance phase, listener instruction scores were higher on the intraverbal test, but mastery criteria was not reached. The listener instruction sessions scores were higher than the speaker instruction scores on the intervention maintenance probes. Results show that forgetting occurred faster on the speaker instruction condition although speaker instruction was the most effective aiding the emergence of bidirectional intraverbals. These results have implications on the teaching of second language. Further insight is provided on how mastery criteria is set during the interventions to achieve the better response accuracy on maintenance. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]