This paper discusses recent methodological approaches and investigations that are aimed at developing reliable behavioral technology for teaching stimulus-stimulus relations to individuals who are minimally verbal and show protracted difficulty in acquiring such relations. The paper has both empirical and theoretical content. The empirical component presents recent data concerning the possibility of generating rapid relational learning in individuals who do not initially show it. The theoretical component (1) considers decades of methodological investigations with this population and (2) suggests a testable hypothesis concerning some individuals exhibit unusual difficulties in learning. Given this background, we suggest a way forward to better understand and perhaps resolve these learning challenges.
In simple and conditional discrimination procedures, a series of stimulus displays are presented, each of which is intended to occasion a response of some type. Regular readers of this journal are likely to be familiar with simultaneous and successive simple discrimination, matching-to-sample, and other conditional discrimination procedures used in the study of basic discriminative and relational learning processes (cf. Mackay, 1991; McIlvane, 2012). However, behavior analysis is not alone in employing such procedures as key elements of methodology. Other major users of multitrial procedures are neuroscientists, some with cognitive perspectives (e.g., in bioimaging applications), others with a behavioral orientation (e.g., in behavioral teratology), psychologists conducting research on cognitive functions (e.g., in memory and attention) and on behavioral processes (e.g., in discrimination learning), special educators, autism and early intervention specialists (e.g., in individualized and classroom procedures for minimally verbal students; applied behavior analysis), and speech/language pathologists (e.g., language intervention procedures; augmentative/alternative communication training).
A few noteworthy exceptions notwithstanding, quantitative analyses of relational learning are most often simple descriptive measures of study outcomes. For example, studies of stimulus equivalence have made much progress using measures such as percentage consistent with equivalence relations, discrimination ratio, and response latency. Although procedures may have ad hoc variations, they remain fairly similar across studies. Comparison studies of training variables that lead to different outcomes are few. Yet to be developed are tools designed specifically for dynamic and/or parametric analyses of relational learning processes. This paper will focus on recent studies to develop (1) quality computer-based programmed instruction for supporting relational learning in children with autism spectrum disorders and intellectual disabilities and (2) formal algorithms that permit ongoing, dynamic assessment of learner performance and procedure changes to optimize instructional efficacy and efficiency. Because these algorithms have a strong basis in evidence and in theories of stimulus control, they may have utility also for basic and translational research. We present an overview of the research program, details of algorithm features, and summary results that illustrate their possible benefits. It also presents arguments that such algorithm development may encourage parametric research, help in integrating new research findings, and support in-depth quantitative analyses of stimulus control processes in relational learning. Such algorithms may also serve to model control of basic behavioral processes that is important to the design of effective programmed instruction for human learners with and without functional disabilities.
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