Relational learning in children with deafness and cochlear implants.
Deaf children with cochlear implants can form sound-picture equivalence classes, proving symbolic learning through hearing is possible.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Almeida-Verdu et al. (2008) worked with deaf children who had cochlear implants.
They used matching-to-sample tasks that paired spoken words with pictures.
Each child learned A-B and B-C pairs, then the team tested if they could match A-C without training.
What they found
Almost every child formed new equivalence classes.
They could hear a word and pick the correct picture, even for pairs they had never seen together.
This shows symbolic behavior can emerge through hearing alone.
How this fits with other research
Taylor et al. (1993) first showed adults could form equivalence classes using only visual shapes. Almeida-Verdu et al. (2008) extends that work by proving deaf children with implants can do the same with sounds and pictures.
Dias et al. (2021) later added EEG and found brain patterns only when classes included pronounceable words. Claudia's use of real spoken words likely created the same brain-friendly conditions.
Perez et al. (2021) showed background colors can control which function a stimulus has after classes form. Claudia's simpler design focused on just getting the classes to form in the first place.
Why it matters
If you work with deaf children who have cochlear implants, you now know they can learn symbolic relations through hearing. This opens new ways to teach vocabulary, reading, and social skills using equivalence-based instruction.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This four-experiment series sought to evaluate the potential of children with neurosensory deafness and cochlear implants to exhibit auditory-visual and visual-visual stimulus equivalence relations within a matching-to-sample format. Twelve children who became deaf prior to acquiring language (prelingual) and four who became deaf afterwards (postlingual) were studied. All children learned auditory-visual conditional discriminations and nearly all showed emergent equivalence relations. Naming tests, conducted with a subset of the children, showed no consistent relationship to the equivalence-test outcomes. This study makes several contributions to the literature on stimulus equivalence. First, it demonstrates that both pre- and postlingually deaf children can acquire auditory-visual equivalence relations after cochlear implantation, thus demonstrating symbolic functioning. Second, it directs attention to a population that may be especially interesting for researchers seeking to analyze the relationship between speaker and listener repertoires. Third, it demonstrates the feasibility of conducting experimental studies of stimulus control processes within the limitations of a hospital, which these children must visit routinely for the maintenance of their cochlear implants.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2008 · doi:10.1901/jeab.2008-89-407