A FURTHER EVALUATION OF PICTURE PROMPTS DURING AUDITORY-VISUAL CONDITIONAL DISCRIMINATION TRAINING

• Published in: Journal of applied behavior analysis Vol. 45; no. 4; pp. 737 - 751
• Main Authors: Carp, Charlotte L., Peterson, Sean P., Arkel, Amber J., Petursdottir, Anna I., Ingvarsson, Einar T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-12-2012; Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior; The Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
• Subjects: Acoustic Stimulation; Auditory Discrimination; Auditory Perception; Auditory Stimuli; Autism; Autistic children; Autistic Disorder - psychology; Behavior; Behavioral Science Research; Biological and medical sciences; Child clinical studies; Child, Preschool; Children; Children & youth; conditional discrimination; Conditioning; Cues; Developmental disorders; Discrimination; Discrimination Learning; Female; Humans; Infantile autism; Language Skills; listener behavior; Male; Medical sciences; Photic Stimulation; Pictorial Stimuli; Prompting; prompts; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Receptive Language; Reinforcement, Psychology; Skills; Therapists; Visual Discrimination; Visual Perception; Visual Stimuli; Human; Incentive; Evaluation; listener behavior; conditional discrimination; Instrumental conditioning; Developmental disorder; Learning; Autism; Hearing; Acquisition process; children; Vision; Perception; Behavior; Stimulus discrimination; Child; prompts; autism
• ISSN: 0021-8855; 1938-3703
• DOI: 10.1901/jaba.2012.45-737

This study was a systematic replication and extension of Fisher, Kodak, and Moore (2007), in which a picture prompt embedded into a least‐to‐most prompting sequence facilitated acquisition of auditory‐visual conditional discriminations. Participants were 4 children who had been diagnosed with autism; 2 had limited prior receptive skills, and 2 had more advanced receptive skills. We used a balanced design to compare the effects of picture prompts, pointing prompts, and either trial‐and‐error learning or a no‐reinforcement condition. In addition, we assessed the emergence of vocal tacts for the 2 participants who had prior tact repertoires. Picture prompts enhanced acquisition for all participants, but there were no differential effects on tact emergence. The results support a generality of the effect reported by Fisher et al. and suggest that a variety of learners may benefit from the incorporation of picture prompts into auditory‐visual conditional discrimination training.