The use of auditory prompting procedure and specific reinforcer assignments to promote auditory-visual conditional discriminations in persons with intellectual disabilities

Abstract

Individuals with autism and developmental disabilities may struggle when presented with auditory-visual relations (Carp, Peterson, Arkel, Peturdottir, & Ingvarsson, 2012). Previous studies have suggested that class specific consequences may serve as an additional stimulus class for acquisition of relational responding to demonstrate stimulus equivalence with the human population. To date, emergence of auditory-visual relations has only been demonstrated with individuals who are ABLA level 6. This study sought to replicate and extend previous findings of Monteiro & Barros (2016), Santos, Nogueira, Queiroz, & Barros (2017), and Varella & De Souza (2014, 2015) by evaluating the effectiveness of class specific consequences in establishing auditory-visual discriminations with intellectually disabled individuals, specifically individuals who are level 4, 5, and/or 6 on the ABLA-R using a table top match to sample procedure. Two of five participants (one ABLA-R level 5 and one ABLA-R level 6) demonstrated emergent auditory-visual relation.