Emergence of Auditory-Visual Relations via Equivalence Class Formation in Children Diagnosed with Autism

The acquisition of auditory-visual discriminations can be difficult for children diagnosed with autism. Training with class-specific consequences may be one way to facilitate acquisition of such discriminations in this population, compared to the standard all-visual procedure. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the emergence of visual-visual and auditory-visual relations in children diagnosed with autism using class-specific consequences in a simpler training protocol that was based on identity matching. Four children participated in the study. The procedure comprised the following phases: 1) identity matching training (AA and BB), 2) tests for AB and BA emergent conditional discriminations, 3) training of non-emergent AB and BA relations (if necessary), 4) test for emergent SA auditory-visual discrimination, 5) auditory-visual discrimination training (if necessary), and 6) test for emergent SB auditory-visual discrimination. Two of the four participants showed emergence of equivalence relations involving visual (AB and BA) and auditory-visual (SA and SB) stimuli. These results document the inclusion of auditory stimuli (spoken words) in equivalence classes when presented as class-specific consequences in training. The data encourage further investigation of procedures for establishing auditory-visual discriminations via equivalence class formation with class-specific consequences in children diagnosed with autism. Two other participants did not reach the learning criterion for arbitrary conditional discrimination training. One possibility is that these difficulties are due to a lack of a prerequisite repertoire. Such data confirm findings of other studies and illustrate the difficulty associated with establishing these types of discriminations in low-functioning children diagnosed with autism.