Comparing stimulus equivalence‐based instruction to self‐study of videos to teach examples of sign language to adults
Equivalence-based instruction beats solo video watching for teaching ASL signs to adults.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Longo and colleagues asked two groups of college students to learn basic ASL signs.
One group used equivalence-based instruction (EBI). The other group watched ASL videos on their own.
The researchers then tested who could sign the words and understand them when shown.
What they found
Every adult who got EBI could both make and read the signs without extra help.
Most adults who only watched the videos needed to watch them again before they passed the test.
EBI saved time and gave full skills in one shot.
How this fits with other research
Griffith et al. (2018) first showed EBI works for college students learning piano chords. Longo repeats the same pattern with signs, making the adult-skill link stronger.
Frampton et al. (2024) also used EBI with students, but taught note-taking tactics instead of language. All three studies find fast, emergent learning in the lab.
Carr et al. (1978) looks like a clash: they taught signs too, yet used slow prompting with non-verbal autistic kids. The kids still learned, but they needed many trials. Different populations need different roads to the same signs, so the studies actually agree that signs are teachable; they just pick separate routes.
Why it matters
If you need staff or caregivers to pick up AAC signs quickly, swap passive videos for EBI. Build small equivalence classes: picture → written word → sign. Run a few match-to-sample blocks, test, and you are done. You save re-training time and get reliable expressive and receptive use right away.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
AbstractThe current study compared equivalence‐based instruction (EBI) to self‐study of American Sign Language (ASL) videos to teach eight 3‐member classes of signs with 24 college students. Four of the equivalence classes consisted of verbs (i.e., throw, touch, blow, spin) and four classes were object nouns (i.e., truck, dollar, egg, ball). Each class consisted of (a) a picture corresponding to the targeted sign, (b) a video clip depicting the sign's topography, and (c) a printed corresponding word. Pretests and posttests assessed the degree to which participants (a) showed emergence of classes during match‐to‐sample (MTS) tests, (b) could sign both single words and verb‐noun pairs (i.e., speaker tasks), and (c) could comply with signed requests consisting of ASL verb‐noun pairs (i.e., listener tasks). EBI consisted of training the AB relation (picture to video clip) followed by tests of all possible derived relations. The AC relation (picture to printed word) was not trained because it was assumed to be present in the participants' repertoires. Self‐study consisted of viewing video clips of the eight ASL signs simultaneously presented with the printed word. The MTS posttest showed equivalence classes emerged for all participants from both EBI and self‐study groups. In addition, all EBI participants met passing criterion for emitting all single signs, all verb‐noun sign pairs, and they complied with all listener tasks. In contrast, only 4 of 12 participants from the self‐study group emitted the single signs. After re‐exposure to self‐study, most participants then passed all posttests. These results are important because they demonstrate recombinative generalization of ASL signs, which increases the utility of ASL skills.
Behavioral Interventions, 2022 · doi:10.1002/bin.1871