Auditory-Visual and Visual-Visual Equivalence Relations in Children

Six typically developing children between 5 and 7 years of age underwent match-to-sample training to establish three-member equivalence classes after first acquiring a unique name for each stimulus. Horne and Lowe's (1996) naming hypothesis predicts that under those circumstances, match-to-sample training contingencies may establish intraverbal relations between the unique names, which in turn guide correct responses on a subsequent test for stimulus equivalence. Following training of baseline relations (AB and AC), participants received an equivalence test followed by an intraverbal test. Performance on the two tests co-varied, such that three participants passed both tests, and three participants failed repeated administrations of both tests, including a modified version of the equivalence test designed to promote intraverbal responding. The participants who failed the equivalence test, however, did so primarily due to poor performance in transitivity trials, but performed accurately in symmetry trials. After training of a third relation (BC), all three participants performed accurately in a symmetry test for the remaining untrained relations (BA, CA, and CB); two of them in the absence of relevant intraverbal repertoires.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intraverbal naming and equivalence class formation in children

Carp

Pétursdóttir

2015

“…Sakko, Martin, Vause, Martin, and Yu () and Ward and Yu () reported better performance in visual–visual arbitrary matching compared with auditory–visual matching in individuals with developmental disabilities. However, Green (), Sidman, Wilson‐Morris, and Kirk (), and Smeets and Barnes‐Holmes () suggested that a baseline that consists of auditory–visual relations is more likely to engender equivalence relations than a visual–visual baseline. Other studies extended these results to crossmodal relations other than auditory–visual, such as gustatory–visual and visual–olfactory (Fienup & Dixon, ; Hayes, Tilley, & Hayes, ; Rehfeldt & Dixon, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emergence of auditory–visual relations from a visual–visual baseline with auditory‐specific consequences in individuals with autism

Varella

Souza

2014

Empirical studies have demonstrated that class-specific contingencies may engender stimulus-reinforcer relations. In these studies, crossmodal relations emerged when crossmodal relations comprised the baseline, and intramodal relations emerged when intramodal relations were taught during baseline. This study investigated whether auditory-visual relations (crossmodal) would emerge after participants learned a visual-visual baseline (intramodal) with auditory stimuli presented as specific consequences. Four individuals with autism learned AB and CD relations with class-specific reinforcers. When A1 and C1 were presented as samples, the selections of B1 and D1, respectively, were followed by an edible (R1) and a sound (S1). Selections of B2 and D2 under the control of A2 and C2, respectively, were followed by R2 and S2. Probe trials tested for visual-visual AC, CA, AD, DA, BC, CB, BD, and DB emergent relations and auditory-visual SA, SB, SC, and SD emergent relations. All of the participants demonstrated the emergence of all auditory-visual relations, and three of four participants showed emergence of all visual-visual relations. Thus, the emergence of auditory-visual relations from specific auditory consequences suggests that these relations do not depend on crossmodal baseline training. The procedure has great potential for applied technology to generate auditory-visual discriminations and stimulus classes in the context of behavior-analytic interventions for autism.

“…Previous studies have assessed the emergence of novel intraverbals following MTS with or without tact training (Bentall, Dickins, & Fox, ; Carp & Petursdottir, ; Lowe & Beasty, ; Smeets & Barnes‐Holmes, ). Whereas these studies demonstrated a co‐occurrence of intraverbals and equivalence class formation, Petursdottir, Carp, Peterson, and Lepper () directly assessed MTS performance consistent with baseline (AB) and symmetry (BA) after preschool children learned to tact and intraverbally relate arbitrary stimuli (A'B’).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Training intraverbal naming to establish equivalence class performances

Lindı́n

Miguel

Jennings

2016

The purpose of this three-experiment study was to evaluate whether performance consistent with the formation of equivalence classes could be established after training adults to tact and intraverbally relate the names of visual stimuli. Fourteen participants were exposed to tact training, listener testing, and intraverbal training (A'B' and B'C') prior to matching-to-sample (MTS) and intraverbal posttests presented in different sequences across experiments. All participants demonstrated emergent MTS and intraverbal relations consistent with equivalence class formation. More importantly, all participants emitted experimentally defined or self-generated tacts or intraverbally named the correct sample-comparison pairs at some point during posttests. These results are consistent with the intraverbal naming account (Horne & Lowe, 1996) in that participants who passed novel relations MTS tests also demonstrated emergence of corresponding intraverbal relations. However, verbal reports and latency data suggest that participants did not necessarily have to use intraverbal naming as a problem solving strategy continuously throughout MTS posttests. These results extended previous research by showing that verbal behavior training of baseline relations (A'B' and B'C') is sufficient to establish novel conditional relations consistent with equivalence class formation.