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Examination of the relation between an assessment of skills and performance on auditory–visual conditional discriminations for children with autism spectrum disorder
Author(s) -
Kodak Tiffany,
Clements Andrea,
Paden Amber R.,
LeBlanc Brittany,
Mintz Joslyn,
Toussaint Karen A.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of applied behavior analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.1
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1938-3703
pISSN - 0021-8855
DOI - 10.1002/jaba.160
Subject(s) - psychology , imitation , autism spectrum disorder , autism , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , audiology , social psychology , medicine
The current investigation evaluated repertoires that may be related to performance on auditory‐to‐visual conditional discrimination training with 9 students who had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The skills included in the assessment were matching, imitation, scanning, an auditory discrimination, and a visual discrimination. The results of the skills assessment showed that 4 participants failed to demonstrate mastery of at least 1 of the skills. We compared the outcomes of the assessment to the results of auditory–visual conditional discrimination training and found that training outcomes were related to the assessment outcomes for 7 of the 9 participants. One participant who did not demonstrate mastery of all assessment skills subsequently learned several conditional discriminations when blocked training trials were conducted. Another participant who did not demonstrate mastery of the auditory discrimination skill subsequently acquired conditional discriminations in 1 of the training conditions. We discuss the implications of the assessment for practice and suggest additional areas of research on this topic.