Comparison of two discrimination methods in teaching Chinese children with autism

Lin and colleagues tested two ways to teach audio-visual matching to preschoolers with autism in China. One group started with simple discrimination (match one sound to one picture). The other group jumped straight into conditional discrimination (pick the picture that goes with each sound from several options).

Kids got short discrete-trial sessions until they reached mastery. The team tracked how many trials and sessions each child needed.

Children who began with conditional-only training reached mastery faster. They needed fewer sessions and less total teaching time than the kids who first learned simple matches.

Starting with the harder task worked better.

Yuan et al. (2023) ran the same comparison three years later and got the same result. Same kids, same country, same outcome: conditional-only wins. This direct replication boosts our confidence in the finding.

Keintz et al. (2011) showed that conditional discrimination training can create new untaught skills in preschoolers with autism. Lin’s team adds that skipping easy steps makes the process even faster.

DeQuinzio et al. (2018) also used discrete-trial discrimination training, but they taught kids when to copy a model and when to say “I don’t know.” Their focus was observational learning, not sequencing, yet both studies show DTT discrimination works for kids with ASD.

If you run matching programs, start with the full conditional task. You will save therapy hours and reach mastery sooner. No need to spend weeks on simple one-to-one matches first. This small change frees up time for other goals and keeps kids from getting bored with easy drills.