Establishing generalized verb-noun instruction-following skills in retarded children

Discrimination Theory of Rule‐governed Behavior

“…Reinforcement of following instructions provided by the verbal community must act upon integrated responses comparable to those demonstrated by Baer et al (1967), Herman et al (1984), and Streifel et al (1976). The contingencies that shape rule-governed behavior operate on correlations of stimulus elements and response elements: A single reinforcement produced by any instance of instructed responding may shape all of its elementary components, simultaneously reinforcing stimulus control over elements of responding and, as discussed next, stimulus control over relations between response units (Catania, 1980;Foss, 1968;Goldstein, 1983).…”

“…An instructional repertoire is considerably more versatile when instructions combine elementary discriminative stimuli that control response properties such as form, stimulus occasion, location, force, and temporal characteristics. Novel variations of instructed responses may then be occasioned when stimulus elements controlling established response properties are combined to form new instructions (Catania, 1980;Catania & Cerutti, 1986;Esper, 1933;Foss, 1968;Goldstein, 1983;Streifel, Wetherby, & Karlan, 1976). For example, in one experiment (Streifel et al, 1976), 2 retarded youths learned to follow two-word instructions derived from a set of nouns (glass, scissors, car) and verbs (push, drop, blow on).…”

“…Novel variations of instructed responses may then be occasioned when stimulus elements controlling established response properties are combined to form new instructions (Catania, 1980;Catania & Cerutti, 1986;Esper, 1933;Foss, 1968;Goldstein, 1983;Streifel, Wetherby, & Karlan, 1976). For example, in one experiment (Streifel et al, 1976), 2 retarded youths learned to follow two-word instructions derived from a set of nouns (glass, scissors, car) and verbs (push, drop, blow on). After a few verbs had been taught in combination with each of the nouns, teaching a new verb in combination with a single noun was often all that was required for the children to follow instructions comprised of the new verb and the remaining nouns.…”

“…An instruction for a discrimination contains discriminative elements for a response form and for its stimulus occasion. One variety was illustrated above by performances that combine action-object discriminations, because the object in such an instruction is the occasion for the action (Herman et al, 1984;Streifel et al, 1976). A second variety is suggested in an experiment on self-instruction (Lovaas, 1964).…”

Teaching Graphic Symbol Combinations to Children with Limited Speech During Shared Story Reading

“…This ability is fundamental to developing true language skills whereby individuals can understand and express novel utterances that they have not previously heard or expressed (Suchowierska, 2006). Researchers have successfully used the matrix strategy to facilitate generalized understanding and expression of semantic relations in children both with and without disabilities (e.g., Goldstein, 1983;Remington, Watson, & Light, 1990;Romski & Ruder, 1984;Striefel, Wetherby, & Karlan, 1976). In each case, researchers drew up a combination matrix, whereby a set number of lexical items fulfilling one specific semantic role was systematically combined with each of a set number of lexical items fulfilling another semantic role.…”