Abstract
Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have difficulties in learning stimulus relations in spelling. Using the two-stimulus pairing procedure, we examined the emergence of stimulus relations between Japanese and English words by comparing the spelling performance of five students with ASD with that of five typically developing students. In the Japanese-English pairing procedure, a Japanese word was presented first, followed by its English translation, and in the English-Japanese pairing, an English word was presented first, followed by its Japanese translation. Training effects were evaluated with a sign test and analysis of variance. All the students correctly spelled the English words in both procedures. The Japanese-English pairing procedure required fewer training blocks than the English-Japanese pairing procedure. In the Japanese-English pairing, students with ASD required fewer training blocks than typically developing students. These results suggest that presenting already established words (i.e., Japanese) first might better facilitate the emergence of stimulus relations in a stimulus pairing procedure.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported in part by grants from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the Research Center for Thinking and Behavioral Judgment Proceedings at Keio University. The Keio University Institutional Review Board of the Faculty of Letters approved this study.
Author Note
Mikimasa Omori, Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Human Relations, Keio University; Jun-ichi Yamamoto, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Letter, Keio University.
Mikimasa Omori is a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the Department of Developmental Disorders, National Institute of Mental Health, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry.
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Omori, M., Yamamoto, Ji. Spelling Instruction by Stimulus Pairing in Japanese Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Effects of Stimulus Presentation Order. Psychol Rec 65, 401–410 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-014-0114-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-014-0114-z