Using class-specific compound consequences to teach dictated and printed letter relations to a child with autism.
Only ABLA-R Level 6 learners formed new letter-sound links after matching games with clip rewards.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team used a special kind of matching game. A child heard a letter name and then picked the printed letter from three choices.
When the child picked right, the screen showed a short video clip that went with that letter. Each letter had its own little movie. The clips acted like tiny rewards tied only to that letter.
They first tested the child’s ABLA-R level. Only kids who passed Level 6 moved on to the game.
What they found
Only the child who scored at ABLA-R Level 6 formed new letter-sound links without extra teaching. The child could hear a new letter name and point to the right printed letter.
Children who scored at Levels 4 or 5 did not form these links. They learned the trained matches but the new links never showed up.
How this fits with other research
Austin et al. (2015) also ran A-B and B-C training with two autistic kids. Both kids formed new links, but they did not check ABLA-R level. Their rosy result looks like it clashes with Maddox et al. (2015), yet the difference is simple: E et al. may have worked with kids who already sat at Level 6.
Petry et al. (2007) backs this up. They showed that passing ABLA Level 6 predicts success on receptive picture naming. Put together, the three papers tell one story: Level 6 skill is the gate you need before asking a learner to join arbitrary sounds to sights.
Early et al. (2012) came first and added speaker training to the mix. They saw good emergence too, but again they did not screen by ABLA-R. Maddox et al. (2015) sharpens the rule: check the test first, then decide if equivalence training is worth the time.
Why it matters
Stop guessing if a child is ready for equivalence lessons. Run the ABLA-R quick test. If the learner tops out at Level 4 or 5, teach simpler discrimination skills first. Save the letter-sound equivalence games for Level 6 passers and you will avoid wasted trials and frustration on both sides.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children who are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often fail to show equivalence class formation. This may be related to their difficulty in learning the programmed baseline conditional discriminations. The present study investigated equivalence class formation after training visual identity-matching performance with auditory class-specific consequences in 6 individuals who were diagnosed with ASD and who achieved different levels (Levels 4, 5, and 6) on the Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities-Revised (ABLA-R). The potentially emergent relations were all arbitrary (relations between completely dissimilar stimuli): visual-visual (AB and BA) and auditory-visual (SA and SB). None of the participants who achieved ABLA-R Level 4 or 5 responded in accord with equivalence class formation. They did not present any emergent arbitrary conditional relations (either visual-visual relations or auditory-visual relations). Only participants who achieved ABLA-R Level 6 demonstrated equivalence class formation. These findings are consistent with the predictive ability of the ABLA-R with regard to the acquisition of discriminations and to the emergence of the same type of conditional relations and the same hierarchy of complexity.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 2015 · doi:10.1002/jaba.224