Evidence From Children with Autism that Derived Relational Responding is a Generalized Operant
PEAK-E equivalence lessons reliably create new untaught relations in kids with autism, proving derived relational responding acts like a generalized operant.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Dixon et al. (2021) used PEAK-E equivalence lessons with children with autism. They tracked whether the kids could form new stimulus pairs that were never directly taught.
The team ran a multiple-baseline design across skills. They first taught trained relations, then looked for untrained derived relations to appear.
What they found
Every child mastered the taught relations and then showed the untrained ones. The new relations kept showing up even when pictures and words changed.
This pattern fits the idea that derived relational responding works like a generalized operant. Once the kids learned the rule, they could apply it anywhere.
How this fits with other research
Chadwick et al. (2000) first showed this effect with neurotypical adults in a lab. Dixon et al. (2021) now prove the same rule holds for autistic children using a school-friendly kit.
Dixon et al. (2017) used PEAK-E with mixed disabilities and saw emergent intraverbals. The 2021 paper sharpens the claim by testing only autistic kids and framing the skill as a generalized operant.
Barry et al. (2024) push the age line upward, teaching temporal relations to autistic adolescents. Together the studies form a ladder: PEAK-E works from preschool to high school and from equivalence to time sequences.
Why it matters
You no longer need to teach every single relation. Run PEAK-E equivalence lessons and let the untrained relations emerge. This saves hours of drill and builds flexible language. If a learner can match cat-picture to spoken "cat," watch for them to also match written CAT without direct teaching. That leap is the generalized operant in action.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
We conducted an empirical examination of derived relational responding as a generalized operant and concurrently evaluated the validity and efficacy of program items contained in the Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge - Equivalence (PEAK-E) curriculum. A first study utilized a multiple-baseline across-skills experimental arrangement to determine the efficacy of equivalence-based instruction guided by PEAK-E, replicated across 11 children with autism. A total of 33 individualized skills were taught, and the subsequent emergence of untrained relations was tested throughout the investigation. The mastery criterion was achieved for 29 of the 33 instructional targets. Additionally, for 3 participants, results were again replicated with a novel set of stimuli. A second study evaluated the degree to which multiple-exemplar equivalence-based instruction led to the emergence of derived relational responding as a generalized operant. The organized nature of the PEAK curriculum allowed the impact on derived relational responding to be compared to that produced by earlier PEAK models that are focused on the direct training of traditional verbal operants. PEAK-E instruction was introduced in a multiple-baseline design across two participants, with a third staying in a training baseline throughout. Increases in derived relational responding using novel, untrained stimuli were only observed when multiple-exemplar equivalence-based instruction was introduced. Taken together, these results provide support for derived relational responding as a generalized operant and demonstrate the utility of conducting larger scale evaluations of higher order behavioral phenomena in single-case experimental arrangements.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2021 · doi:10.1007/s40617-020-00425-y