A Systematic Review of Derived Relational Responding Beyond Coordination in Individuals with Autism and Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.
Kids with autism and ID can learn relations like opposite and bigger-than, but most proofs are small and weak, so probe before you trust generalization.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Gibbs et al. (2023) hunted for every paper that taught kids with autism or ID to relate items in ways beyond simple matching. They screened 38 studies that worked on relations like opposite, bigger-than, or before-after.
Each study had to test if the learner could answer new questions that were never directly taught. The team then rated how well each study was designed.
What they found
Learners with ASD or ID can indeed master these higher-order relations, but the evidence is shaky. Most studies used only a handful of kids and weak designs.
Because quality varies so much, we cannot yet say how well the skills last or transfer to daily life.
How this fits with other research
Kydd et al. (1982) already showed that adolescents with developmental delays formed equivalence classes after basic A-B and B-C training. Gibbs adds newer frames like opposition and comparison, pushing the field beyond simple coordination.
Belisle et al. (2020) scoping review of 123 child studies found most stuck to sameness relations. Gibbs narrows the lens to ASD/IDD only and confirms the same gap: complex frames are still under-studied.
Together the three papers trace a slow crawl from 1980s equivalence to today’s broader frames, with quality worries staying constant.
Why it matters
Before you program for complex relational frames, probe first. Run brief tests of untrained opposite or comparison trials to see if the learner shows emergence. If not, teach a few exemplars and retest. Keep data on maintenance and real-world use. This guards against assuming generalization that the literature only hints at.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
As interest in derived relational responding has increased, so have the number of investigations evaluating interventions to promote the emergence of derived responding for individuals with autism, as well as other intellectual and developmental disabilities. However, much of the literature has focused on the relation of sameness, and less is known about interventions to facilitate derived responding in other relations. Systematic searches identified 38 studies contained in 30 articles that met inclusion criteria. These studies were analyzed according to their participants, assessment methods, experimental design, content taught, setting, teaching procedures, derived responses, outcomes, and reliability measures. The quality of the studies was measured using the Single Case Analysis and Research Framework (SCARF). The results of the current review indicate that many learners with autism spectrum disorder and other intellectual and developmental disabilities demonstrate derived relational responding beyond the relation of coordination across varied instructional content and teaching methodologies, but the quality and rigor of the published literature requires the results be interpreted with caution, leading to recommendations for future research.
Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, 2023 · doi:10.1007/s10882-023-09901-z