Abstract
Foss (Journal of Experimental Psychology, 76, 450–459, 1968a; Journal of Experimental Psychology, 77, 341–344, 1968b) compared overlap and non-overlap instruction to promote recombinative response generalization using a matrix training procedure. In the present study, we used a similar set of procedures to teach tacting of kitchen items and prepositions (i.e., relational autoclitics) to three females ages 13–20, diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. We taught some kitchen items/prepositions as tacts (e.g., “the strainer is to the right of the box”) according to a non-overlap instructional sequence. Subsequently, we taught more combinations in an overlap instructional sequence. Each training procedure was followed by probes of untrained relations. Two participants demonstrated recombinative generalization of untrained combinations following the first non-overlap phase, while the third participant demonstrated some response generalization of untrained relations after a few additional training sequences. All three participants demonstrated generalized tacting of object components while two participants showed generalized tacting of preposition components.
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Notes
Additional results from this study regarding cross-modal transfer were not included due to limited baseline (Allie and Jessie) and probe data (Jessie). Results indicated transfer across modalities to listener responses for Gale and Allie when experimenters trained only tacting for Allie and Gale. Jessie demonstrated response generalization of listener responses for most components and for trained and untrained combinations. For more information, address correspondence to the authors.
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Audrey Pauwels is now at Wedgwood Christian Services. This study was conducted as partial fulfillment of the first author’s Master of Science degree in Applied Behavior Analysis at Western New England University under the name Audrey Mittan.
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Pauwels, A.A., Ahearn, W.H. & Cohen, S.J. Recombinative Generalization of Tacts Through Matrix Training with Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Analysis Verbal Behav 31, 200–214 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40616-015-0038-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40616-015-0038-y