This study assessed whether tact training would establish analogies as measured by equivalence-equivalence relations. In Experiment 1, six college students were trained to tact "same" or "different" in the presence of AB and BC compounds based on component class membership (e.g., A1B1 as "same", and A1B2 as "different"), and then tested on emergent tacts (BA, CB, AC, CA) and equivalence-equivalence relations. Only one of six participants passed all tests without remedial training. In Experiment 2, six college students were trained to tact only compounds belonging to the same class as "same". Three of six participants passed all tests without remedial training. In Experiment 3, six college students were trained to tact stimuli belonging to the same class with a common name prior to exposure to relational tact training. All participants passed tests without remedial training. In Experiment 4, eight college students were trained to tact stimuli belonging to the same class with a common name. Six participants passed without remedial training, while two, who did not tact the relation of the compounds, did not. Results from these studies suggest that simple discrimination of individual components and their relation in the form of tacts is related with equivalence performance.

The objective of this study was to teach manual signs through an automated matching-to-sample procedure and to test for the emergence of new conditional relations and imitative behaviors. Seven adults with mild to severe mental retardation participated. Four were also hearing impaired. Relations between manual signs (set A) and pictures (set B) were initially taught, followed by the training of corresponding printed words (set C) and pictures (set B). Further presentations of conditional discriminations tested for the emergence of AC, followed by tests for the emergence of imitative signing behavior (D) in the presence of either pictures (B) or printed words (C). Each stimulus set was comprised of 9 elements. The stimuli were still pictures, printed words, and dynamic presentations of manual signs. A pretest was conducted to determine which signs the participants could make pre-experimentally. Teaching was arranged in a multiple baseline design across 3 groups of 3 words each. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether participants would emit manual signs in expressive signs tests as a result of observation (video modeling) during match-to-sample training in the absence of explicit training. Five of the 7 subjects passed tests of emergence and emitted at least 50% of the signs. Two were hearing impaired with signing experience, and 3 were not hearing impaired and had no signing experience. Thus, observation of video recorded manual signs in a matching-to-sample training procedure was effective at establishing some signs by adults with mental retardation.

The aim of this study was to present the association of educational strategies and differentiated instructions with assistive technology for special education students. The use of technology is an important ally for mediation among teachers, students and academic content. For special education students, there is a need to promote general adjustments, such as architectural, curricula and material adaptations. Among the technological possibilities, assistive technology has gained prominence in order to provide functional improvement and success in performance by people with disabilities. The potential participation achieved by using a resource properly implemented makes this theme present in educational policies aiming the inclusive education, permeating the need for the teacher to make use of these resources when teaching these students. However, by just having the resource available does not guarantee that it will benefit learning, it is necessary to introduce differentiated instruction strategies, because each student's specific needs must be considered. Teachers who use differentiated instruction are quite aware of the goal they want to achieve and the curriculum sequence defined by the governing bodies of education, and care about the education and learning of academic content with the necessary adaptations for special education students. They are aware that students are at different skill levels, but in a continuous understanding and development. The main goal of assistive technology, associated with the applicability of appropriate strategies, is to maximize the skills of each student by teaching and helping him/her to develop it as much and as quickly as he/she can. Once the skills are acquired, they enhance learning for these students because they make accessibility to content easier and make the learning enjoyable.

The purpose of the current study was to assess whether individuals with intellectual disabilities would emit untrained speaker responses (i.e., signed tacts and mands) after being taught listener behaviors. Listener relations were trained via an automated matching-to-sample (MTS) procedure. Following mastery, the emergence of signed tacts, generalized tacts, and mands was tested. All participants met criterion in listener relations training and showed the emergence of almost all relations. Results suggest that teaching listener relations first, through MTS tasks, is a viable way to produce emergence of speaker relations.

Nassim Chamel Elias 2 4 , Orcid: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4197-623X RESUMO. Indivíduos com o Transtorno do Espectro do Autismo (TEA) podem apresentar déficits em comportamentos sociais, como linguagem e interações interpessoais. Intervenções utilizando histórias sociais têm mostrado resultados promissores no ensino de comportamentos socialmente adequados e na redução de comportamentos socialmente inadequados em sala de aula, entre outros ambientes. Histórias sociais são personalizadas a partir do repertório comportamental de cada criança e apresentam as contingências de reforçamento envolvidas no comportamento desejado, no próprio ambiente em que o comportamento ocorre. O objetivo deste estudo foi verificar os efeitos da apresentação de histórias sociais na aprendizagem de comportamentos adequados e na redução de comportamentos inadequados de crianças com TEA em sala de aula. Os participantes foram dois meninos de seis e nove anos de idade, com diagnóstico de TEA, que apresentavam comportamentos inadequados diante de demanda social em ambiente escolar. Comportamentos-alvo para cada participante foram inseridos nas histórias sociais que mostravam as contingências do comportamento inadequado e da resposta alternativa adequada. Antes do início do período em que os comportamentos ocorriam com maior frequência, as histórias foram lidas para as crianças e as frequências dos comportamentos -alvo foram registradas durante a aula. Comportamentos adequados eram reforçados e os inadequados eram seguidos de procedimentos de correção. Os resultados indicaram aumento nos comportamentos adequados e diminuição nos inadequados para os dois participantes, e a diminuição da frequência de outros comportamentos inadequados não tratados diretamente na história social como efeito do engajamento em repert órios adequados de participação nas tarefas em sala de aula. Portanto, as histórias sociais parecem representar uma estratégia promissora na redução de comportamentos inadequados e aumento de adequados em sala de aula, com tempo curto de aplicação e baixo custo de construção dos materiais utilizados. Palavras-chave: Habilidades sociais; modificação do comportamento; autismo.