Control of responding by location of auditory stimuli: adjacency of sound and response.

Four adults with unknown diagnoses sat in a small room. A speaker on the left played one tone, a speaker on the right played a different tone.

If the left tone sounded, pressing the left button earned a coin. If the right tone sounded, only the right button paid. The researchers swapped the speaker locations to see how fast each setup created accurate choices.

When the speaker sat right above its matching button, learners hit 90 % correct in one or two sessions.

When the speaker was on the opposite side, or when both speakers hung in the center, mastery took about ten sessions. Final accuracy ended the same, only the road was longer.

Hawkes et al. (1974) moved autistic children from 1:1 teaching to a group class by fading in classroom cues. Both studies show physical distance matters: put the controlling signal close to the response first, then fade in harder arrangements.

Rasing et al. (1992) gave adults with mild disabilities a written task list plus feedback. Like the 1977 study, they paired the prompt with the action spot; stimulus control transferred faster than with verbal cues alone.

Reid et al. (2005) later showed that once cues lock in, you can remove them and responding still tracks the schedule. The 1977 paper gives the baseline: adjacency speeds that first lock-in.

Next time you set up a discrimination task, place the S-D right next to the response key, card, or button. You will see fewer errors and reach mastery days earlier. After the skill is solid, gradually move the cue or introduce extra stimuli to build flexibility.