Association for Behavior Analysis International

This symposium will look at several procedures to teach requisite skills needed for conditional responding to a variety of stimuli across visual-visual, and auditory-visual, and auditory discriminations. The first study used a basic go/no-go procedure in an attempt to establish two three-member equivalence classes for six typically developing adults, and to test whether this type of preparation could be a viable alternative to the traditional matching-to-sample (MTS) procedure. The second study replicated previous research comparing whether sample-first or comparison-first presentations eased acquisition of auditory-visual discriminations for seven typically-developing children. The third study compared three procedures to teach auditory discrimination to three children with ASD-like behaviors. The fourth study utilized a shaping procedure to establish auditory discrimination skills for three children with autism. All procedures were effective in teaching skills to adults and children with and without disabilities, and included procedural modifications that may be useful in developing alternative evidence-based teaching technologies to fragile learners.

Although the utility of the matching-to-sample procedure (MTS) has been shown in both basic and applied settings, it requires participants to demonstrate several prerequisite skills such as simple-simultaneous and simple-successive discriminations. Our lab has conducted four experiments with 24 undergraduate students to evaluate the effectiveness of a Successive MTS (S-MTS) procedure in which only one stimulus is presented at a time. In these experiments participants were taught to touch a single comparison after the presentation of its related sample (e.g., touch B1 after A1), and not touch the comparison after the presentation of the unrelated sample (e.g., not touch B1 after A2). Although all participants learned conditional relations, participants who failed equivalence tests may have done so due to a history of reinforcement during baseline probes. In the current experiment with six participants, the removal of probes yielded similar performance (data attached). We will discuss additional manipulations, including the manipulation of experimental instructions.

Receptive identification trials can be conceptualized as match-to-sample (MTS) trials in which reinforcement of a particular comparison selection (e.g., a picture) is conditional upon the presence of a specific sample stimulus (e.g., a spoken word). Consistent with common laboratory practices and related clinical recommendations, Petursdottir & Aguilar (2016) found a reliable sample-first advantage when they taught typically developing boys to identify birds and flags via laptop. The present series of experiments followed up on this finding. Experiment 1 was a systematic replication of Petursdottir & Aguilar (2016) that included prompted error correction trials following incorrect responses. Four typically developing 5- and 6-year-old boys participated. Acquisition in the sample-first and the comparison-first condition was compared in an adapted alternating-treatments design with replication across stimulus sets. An advantage of sample-first presentation was seen in 4 of 7 evaluations, whereas 2 evaluations suggested a comparison-first advantage. Thus, the sample-first advantage was less reliable than in the previous study. Possible reasons are discussed, and a second experiment is in progress to compare acquisition under sample-first and comparison-first conditions with and without error correction.

Auditory discrimination is a skill that many learners with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have difficulty acquiring, demonstrating, and maintaining. Development of appropriate stimulus controlwhere the auditory stimulus controls respondingcan be challenging, as auditory stimuli and visual stimuli often co-occur in discrete trial arrangements. In the current study, we detail a procedure used with three learners with ASD to enhance the likelihood that auditory stimuli, and not visual stimuli, controlled their responding. BIGMack buttons were used to play recorded sounds. Initially, learners were taught to orient to a sound played through a single BIGMack button (activated remotely out of view). Second, they were taught to locate the button playing the sound with one, and then two, distractor buttons. Next, we decreased the spacing between buttons to form a three-button array. Lastly, learners were taught to respond to the button that played the sound after the experimenter activated the buttons directly. Students 1 and 2 were able demonstrate auditory discrimination at acquisition levels. We were unable to transfer stimulus control for Student 3 once the experimenter pressed the buttons. Implications for enhancing the effectiveness of stimulus control procedures used to teaching auditory discrimination will be discussed.