The development of functional and equivalence classes in high-functioning autistic children: the role of naming.
Teaching kids to give one name to many pictures can unlock stimulus equivalence in high-functioning autistic preschoolers.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with four preschoolers who had autism and strong language scores.
They first taught each child to give the same made-up name to three different pictures.
After naming, they tested if the kids could match the pictures without being taught.
What they found
Two children formed full equivalence classes right after the naming lessons.
The other two showed some matching but did not pass every test.
The study says naming can jump-start equivalence in high-functioning autistic kids.
How this fits with other research
Anonymous (1996) ran almost the same lesson and got the same split score.
Carnerero et al. (2014) later showed kids can learn the names just by watching, then still form classes.
Salomonsen et al. (2024) updated the idea: teach one item at a time with Serial-MET and three of four preschoolers hit full bidirectional naming.
Kim et al. (2023) pushed further, proving that quick speaker-listener drills can finish the job when naming alone stalls.
Why it matters
If a child is stuck on matching tasks, add a simple naming round first.
Have them call every picture in the set by one silly name, then probe for emergent relations.
If naming alone is not enough, rotate in the newer Serial-MET or mixed-operant drills shown by Salomonsen et al. (2024) and Kim et al. (2023).
This low-prep step can turn a failed equivalence lesson into a pass within one session.
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Join Free →Before your next equivalence probe, have the child label every stimulus with the same silly name, then retest for emergent matching.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The development of functional and equivalence classes was studied in four high-functioning, preschool-aged autistic children. Initially, all subjects failed to demonstrate match-to-sample relations indicative of stimulus equivalence among two three-member classes of visual stimuli. Then, 2 subjects showed emergence of those relations after they were taught to assign the same name to all members in each class. Next, subjects were taught names for new stimuli outside the match-to-sample format. On subsequent match-to-sample tests, 2 subjects demonstrated untrained conditional relations among the stimuli given a common name. New, unnamed stimuli were then related via match-to-sample training to stimuli from sets of named stimuli. Tests for emergent conditional relations between the new unnamed stimuli and the named stimuli yielded positive results for 1 subject and somewhat mixed results for 3 subjects. Finally, without naming, 2 subjects developed stimulus equivalence among two new three-member classes of visual stimuli. These data suggest that naming may remediate failures to develop untrained conditional relations, some of which are indicative of stimulus equivalence.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1992 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1992.58-123