Non-simultaneous stimulus presentations and their role in derived naming: exploring the impact of contextual cues

Abstract

Incidental naming has attracted increasing attention in the behaviour-analytic literature, but no studies have focused on the potential role of contextual cues in such naming, as defined by Relational Frame Theory. In accordance with the theory, presenting an object and its name simultaneously may function as a cue for naming itself and may also be viewed as explicitly training a bi-directional name relation. Sivaraman at al. (2021) designed a novel non-simultaneous naming presentation technique to assess emergent listener and speaker responses. The current doctoral thesis sought to explore the role of contextual cues and their impact when manipulated in a non-simultaneous naming presentation, similar to Sivaraman et al (2021) but with both adult and child participants, across seven experiments. The same non-simultaneous pairing procedure with the manipulation of contextual cues was employed across all experiments. In the experiments reported in Chapters 2 and 3, the procedure was employed in the context of dyad naming experiments with adults and children, respectively. In the experiments reported in Chapters 4 and 5, the procedure was employed in using an attentive overhearing format with adults and children, respectively. The empirical findings obtained in the current thesis indicated that both adults and children were sensitive to the presence versus absence of contextual cues, with the inclusion of cues facilitating improved naming performance. Consequently, the results suggested that contextual cues support the emergence of incidental bidirectional naming, specifically when a delay occurs between an object-name relation. Overall, the current research programme marks the first step in the understanding of the variables at play that generate complex patterns of relational responding involved in incidental bidirectional naming.

Date of Award	May 2026
Original language	English
Supervisor	Dermot Barnes-Holmes (Supervisor) & Julian Leslie (Supervisor)