EFFECTS OF TRAINING MULTIPLE FORM CLASSES ON ACQUISITION, GENERALIZATION AND MAINTENANCE OF WORD RETRIEVAL IN A SINGLE-SUBJECT

A study by McNeil et nl. reported no generalization effects in two ind ividuals with aphasia following application of a word finding treatmen t in which subjects were trained sequentially on lexical items arrange d by form class. The present investigation examined, in one of the two subjects from the original study, whether training on lexical items f rom a variety of form classes concurrently would result in greater res ponse generalization than was observed previously in this subject. Res ults replicated earlier findings with positive acquisition and mainten ance effects and little evidence of generalization to untrained items within or across form classes.