Facilitating relational framing in children and individuals with developmental delay using the relational completion procedure.
An automated matching game teaches children with autism and other delays to derive new sameness relations without direct training.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Walsh et al. (2014) tested an automated computer game called the Relational Completion Procedure.
The game teaches kids to pick pictures that "go together" in the same way.
Kids with autism, kids with other delays, and typical preschoolers all played until they got most trials right.
What they found
Most children in every group learned to pick new pictures that had never been trained.
They showed derived sameness: if A = B and B = C, they picked A = C without direct teaching.
The computer kept score and moved kids forward only when they were right.
How this fits with other research
Stanley et al. (2018) later used the same idea with high-schoolers who have autism.
They swapped the computer game for PEAK-E lessons and still saw strong results.
Together the two studies show equivalence training works from age 3 to 18.
Barton et al. (2019) and Cohen et al. (1993) only looked at spotting autism early; they did not teach any skills, so they sit on a different shelf.
Why it matters
You can run the Relational Completion Procedure on any tablet in ten-minute bursts.
Start with three pictures the child already knows, then let the program add new ones.
If the child masters the chain, you have proof that derived relations are in place.
That foundation makes later language, math, and social-skills programs easier to build.
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Join Free →Load three familiar pictures into a simple matching app, train A-B and B-C relations, then test A-C and record yes/no for derived picks.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The Relational Completion Procedure is effective for establishing same, opposite and comparative derived relations in verbally able adults, but to date it has not been used to establish relational frames in young children or those with developmental delay. In Experiment 1, the Relational Completion Procedure was used with the goal of establishing two 3-member sameness networks in nine individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (eight with language delay). A multiple exemplar intervention was employed to facilitate derived relational responding when required. Seven of nine participants in Experiment 1 passed tests for derived relations. In Experiment 2, eight participants (all of whom, except one, had a verbal repertoire) were given training with the aim of establishing two 4-member sameness networks. Three of these participants were typically developing young children aged between 5 and 6 years old, all of whom demonstrated derived relations, as did four of the five participants with developmental delay. These data demonstrate that it is possible to reliably establish derived relations in young children and those with developmental delay using an automated procedure.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2014 · doi:10.1002/jeab.66