Establishing initial auditory‐visual conditional discriminations and emergence of initial tacts in young children with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often display impaired listener skills, and few studies have evaluated procedures for establishing initial auditory‐visual conditional discrimination skills. We developed and evaluated a treatment package for training initial auditory‐visual conditional discriminations based on the extant research on training such discriminations in children with ASD with at least some preexisting skills in this area. The treatment package included (a) conditional‐only training, (b) prompting the participant to echo the sample stimulus as a differential observing response, (c) prompting correct selection responses using an identity‐match prompt, (d) using progressively delayed prompts, and (e) repeating trials until the participant emitted an independent correct response. Results indicated all participants mastered all listener targets, and the two participants for whom we tested the emergence of corresponding tacts showed mastery of most tacts without direct training. We discuss these results relative to prior research on listener skills and tacts.

Comparison of two discrimination methods in teaching Chinese children with autism

“…It is not clear what component skills may best predict mastering these audio‐visual conditional discriminations, but a more prolonged history of attending to both visual and auditory discriminative stimuli during teaching trials may facilitate acquisition. In Fisher et al’s () study, novice learners successfully acquired auditory conditional discriminations (i.e., receptive labeling) via the conditional‐only method. Additional studies might compare these teaching procedures with students who experience difficulties with auditory–visual conditional discrimination.…”

“…Teaching audio‐visual conditional discriminations is a common and important goal in intervention programs for young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; Fisher et al, ; Holmes, Eikeseth, & Schulze, ). In this preparation, the instructor presents the learner with a comparison array of visual stimuli (e.g., three cards depicting an apple, a blueberry, and a banana) and on each trial presents a vocal sample such as, “point to apple”, “point to blueberry”, or “point to banana”.…”

“…This vocal sample serves as a conditional sample stimulus in that the availability of reinforcement for a response (in this case a point to one of the three picture cards) is conditional upon which sample stimulus is presented. The spoken sample stimulus is rotated across trials, such that each comparison stimulus serves as the S+ (i.e., the stimulus to which the learner's response would produce reinforcement) on some trials and as an S‐ (i.e., the stimuli to which the learner's response would not produce reinforcement) on other trials (Fisher et al ).…”

A Comparison of Variations of Prompt Delay During Instruction on an Expressive Labeling Task

“…Conditional discriminations are essential in functional and academic skills commonly taught in behavioral interventions for individuals with ASD/ID (Fisher et al 2019;Green 2001). Conditional discriminations contain four components: (1) a contextual or conditional stimulus; (2) a discriminative stimulus (S D ) indicating that reinforcement is available given a response; (3) a response; and (4) a consequence.…”

“…"Prompt delays" are more often termed "time delays". However, as it is the delivery of the prompt that varies in time, the former term is more appropriate (seeFisher et al 2019; National Autism Center 2015;O'Neill et al 2018).…”