Abstract
Teaching tact and intraverbal responses based on function–feature–class to children with language delays can result in the emergence of untrained relational responses. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of compound stimuli in discriminated operants (i.e., different combinations of hear, see, touch, and taste) on the acquisition of object–attribute relations, on the emergence of untrained attribute–object relations, and on the acquisition and emergence of same–different relations between objects and their attributes. All the participants were on the autism spectrum and between 4 and 12 years old. Participants who did not meet the mastery criterion or show emergent intraverbal responses during initial training trials completed a fluency-based practice phase. Overall results showed that all six participants required fewer trials to meet the criterion in the condition involving compound stimuli (e.g., HearSeeSay plus Touch, Taste, or Sniff) as compared to the HearSeeSay-alone condition. In addition, participants required fewer fluency practice timings in the condition involving compound stimuli to meet fluency aim.
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Acknowledgement
This research was completed in partial fulfillment of a doctoral degree in applied behavior analysis at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. We would like to thank Dr. Rick Kubina and Dr. Scott Herbst for their contributions to the manuscript. We would also like to thank Jessica Quintanilla, Samantha Contreras, Morgan Chapple, Grant Ingram, Amanda St. Romain, and Marcie Sanchez for their assistance with data collection.
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Thakore, A., Stockwell, A. & Eshleman, J. Learning Channels: The Role of Compound Stimuli in the Emergence of Intraverbal Relations in Children on the Autism Spectrum. Analysis Verbal Behav 37, 97–122 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40616-020-00142-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40616-020-00142-1