Effectiveness and persistence of precurrent mediating behavior in delayed matching to sample and oddity matching with children.
Teaching kids a brief, picture-specific action keeps matching accuracy high across delays and helps them switch to new rules.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with preschoolers who had no diagnosis.
Each child learned a delayed matching game on a computer.
The sample picture disappeared, then came back with two new pictures.
Kids had to pick the one that matched the sample.
Sometimes they waited 0, 5, 10, or 15 seconds before choosing.
Half the kids were told to press a special key for each sample.
The other half pressed the same key every time.
The special-key group made a unique move for each picture.
The same-key group made one move no matter what the sample was.
What they found
Kids who used a special key kept getting answers right even after long waits.
Kids who used the same key started to fail once the wait grew past five seconds.
When the rule flipped to oddity matching, only the special-key kids switched easily.
Their unique moves acted like silent labels that held the picture in mind.
How this fits with other research
Assumpcão Júnior (1998) seems to disagree.
That study showed kids acing 15-30 second delays without any rehearsing at all.
The gap is likely about procedure: B used zero prompts, while J et al. first taught a clear mediating move.
Once the move is taught, it protects memory; without it, some kids still manage, but many slip.
Farmer-Dougan et al. (1999) carried the idea to children with intellectual disability.
They added prompts for picture-specific moves and saw quick jumps in accuracy, tying the same mediating trick to a new population.
Snapper et al. (1969) did the groundwork in rats.
The animals nibbled wood chips while waiting, and removing the nibbling wrecked their timing, foreshadowing that simple collateral acts can bridge delays.
Why it matters
If a child forgets rules or samples during wait times, teach a quick, unique action for each item.
Have the client tap one pattern for red, another for blue, and so on.
Keep the move simple and silent so it does not disrupt the room.
The action becomes the child’s own cue, cutting delay-related errors and easing later rule switches.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Two kinds of mediating behavior were compared with respect to their effectiveness in variable-delay matching-to-sample and oddity-matching tasks. Each of four 5-year-old children was trained to emit either differential or common mediating responses. The differential mediating response consisted of pressing a specific computer key corresponding to either of two possible sample stimuli (a red or a green square). The common mediating response consisted of pressing one of the two response keys regardless of the sample. The differential-response subjects did not show the typical, delay-related decrease in matching-to-sample performance that characterized the behavior of common-response subjects. An oddity-matching task was then introduced, and subjects were instructed to use the mediating keys however they preferred, including not at all. Differential-response subjects continued to respond on the originally trained mediating keys in response to sample presentation and later reversed their choice responding, thus accommodating the oddity-matching requirements. Common-response subjects continued to emit the previously trained mediating response and experienced limited success in oddity matching. Results were interpreted in terms of stimulus control, instructional control, and experimental history.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1989 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1989.52-181