Gladys Williams

Stimulus Relations Analysis and the Emergence of Novel Intraverbals

In three experiments designed to analyze the emergence of untaught operants with a spoken response in normally developing 5- to 6-year-old children, verbal operants with the names of countries, cities, and parks were used as stimuli or responses—intraverbals. Children learned Country-City intraverbals and City-Park intraverbals. The authors then probed the emergence of novel intraverbals without reinforcement, which resulted from combining the stimuli and responses of the taught intraverbals. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the novel intraverbals might emerge without reinforcement. Experiment 2 showed that learning more basic operants facilitates the emergence of the novel intraverbals. Experiment 3 provided a within-participant replication and demonstrated that relations with novel stimuli of the same type emerge at a quicker pace as children learn novel sets. These results showed basic processes involved in complex verbal behavior, such as reasoning.

Teaching a Simple Discrimination Using a Blocked-Trial Procedure to Overcome Location Overselectivity

This investigation explored whether a blocked-trial procedure would serve to teach a simple discrimination to a child with autism with problems of overselectivity due to location preference. A series of AB designs were used. The child learned first to select positive stimulus (a card with his name) regardless of its location on a screen. Thereafter, the positive stimulus was located in the lower left position and a negative stimulus was located in the lower right position on the screen. Once he learned to select the correct stimulus, the locations were reversed. Upon further mastery, the number of trials with the stimuli in a given location was progressively decreased, until he learned the discrimination with the stimuli at random locations. Further probes indicated that the letters controlled responding, rather than irrelevant features. Finally, the selection of the card with his name continued when the stimuli were located in any of four locations on the screen, and when three cards with names of other children appeared as distractors. Thus, the procedure may serve to teach discriminations and to overcome overselectivity in children with autism and other developmental disabilities.