Establishment of exclusion responding in children with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

This study aimed to teach auditory-visual relations using exclusion training and test the emergence of exclusion responding in novel relations and naming by exclusion in four participants diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The treatment package consisted of multiple exposures to exclusion trials, prompting, and reinforcement. Four types of matching-to-sample trials (baseline, control, exclusion, and probe trials) and naming trials were used during the study. The auditory-visual matching to sample responses and naming responses of the new stimuli was tested. Three out of four participants demonstrated positive learning outcomes with the auditory-visual relations that were taught. One out of four participants demonstrated naming by exclusion. Posttest results show that exclusion responses generalized to stimuli used beyond training for the three successful participants. The results indicate that the treatment package can likely be an important teaching technology to establish exclusion responding.

Emergence of auditory–visual discrimination and tacts through exclusionary responding

“…Second, this study sought to increase instructional efficiency by including two sequences of bidirectional naming, that is, speaker to listener (i.e., tact to auditory–visual discrimination) and listener to speaker (i.e., auditory–visual discrimination to tact) responses. Previous literature that sought to examine bidirectional naming within responding by exclusion (i.e., tacting by exclusion) only assessed bidirectional naming in one sequence: listener to speaker responses (e.g., Greer & Du, 2015; Langsdorff et al, 2017; Sivaraman & Bhabu, 2018). Most significantly and clinically applicable, this study assessed if newly acquired stimuli trained only as tacts would function as familiar stimuli for responding by exclusion.…”

“…Responding by exclusion is demonstrated when an unfamiliar comparison stimulus is selected from an array of familiar comparison stimuli when presented with an unfamiliar sample stimulus (Dixon, 1977). In this case, familiar comparison stimuli are those that have been differentially reinforced in the presence of specific sample stimuli (i.e., mastered auditory–visual discriminations) whereas the unfamiliar comparison stimulus has not been exposed to reinforcement contingencies in the presence of sample stimuli (Ferrari et al, 2008; Sivaraman & Bhabu, 2018). In other words, an exclusionary response occurs when the learner selects a stimulus in an array by rejecting the familiar stimuli within that array.…”

“…Researchers have also investigated the emergence of correct untrained tacts following responding by exclusion during auditory–visual discriminations. Tacting by exclusion (i.e., naming by exclusion) refers to cases in which individuals respond correctly to unfamiliar stimuli during auditory–visual discrimination trials and then, without direct training, also tact the original unfamiliar stimuli (e.g., Greer & Du, 2015; Sivaraman & Bhabu, 2018). Although research has shown that some individuals do in fact tact by exclusion, for others, it is necessary to train the skill directly.…”

“…In a similar study, Sivaraman and Bhabu (2018) evaluated multiple exposures, error correction, and reinforcement on auditory–visual discrimination by exclusion and tacting by exclusion skills with autistic children. After training, the experimenters tested for correct responding when auditory–visual discrimination trials contained new unfamiliar stimuli alongside familiar stimuli and tested tacting by exclusion (termed by the authors naming by exclusion) for those stimuli.…”

“…Research on tacting by exclusion for autistic children is scarce and results from those studies are inconsistent. Across studies, it seems that some children may emit tacts by exclusion, others may develop the skill after auditory–visual discrimination by exclusion is trained, and for some children, even after direct training, the skill is not reliably emitted (e.g., Greer & Du, 2015; Langsdorff et al, 2017; Sivaraman & Bhabu, 2018). Given these inconsistencies, more research on responding by exclusion is warranted with this population especially considering the potential of this procedure to increase instructional efficiency.…”