Auditory sentence comprehension in children with cochlear implants after simple visual discrimination training with specific auditory-visual consequences

Abstract

The present study evaluated the effects of simple discrimination training with specific consequences on auditory comprehension in children with cochlear implants (CIs). Demonstration of auditory comprehension was based on derived conditional relations and the formation of equivalence relations. Participants learned two sets of three simple visual discriminations in which the positive stimulus (S + ) was a written pseudo-sentence (C1, C2, or C3) or a compound abstract picture (D1, D2, or D3), displayed in the correct orientation. Each trial presented the S + simultaneously with two Swhich were the same sentence or picture as the positive stimulus but were displayed in either an upside-down or an inverse orientation. Correct responses were followed by specific consequences with two components presented simultaneously: a dictated pseudo-sentence (A) and a representative picture (B). Probes of arbitrary matching to sample assessed derived auditory-visual (AB, AC, and AD) and visual-visual (BC, CB, BD, DB, CD, and DC) conditional relations. All three participants learned the simple discriminations; two of them showed derived conditional relations, demonstrating the formation of three ABCD classes. The present study replicated and extended previous results on sentence learning in children with CIs, suggesting the simple discrimination training with specific consequences as an efficient procedure to generate auditory-visual and symbolic relations in this population.

A retrospective 60‐year review of Murray Sidman's Tactics of Scientific Research and some of its influence on behavior analysis

“…A quick glance over the last 10 citations of Tactics in international published articles up to October 2020 shows that the book is still being referred to as a major source that summarized and explained the practices of a behavior‐analytic methodology. The richness of the book is well illustrated by the range of topics covered just in this small selection of those 10 most recent publications: Locey (2020) mentioned that Tactics was “once considered ‘the bible of Operant Methodology’,” and several articles cited Tactics in the context of systematic replication or establishing the generality or representativeness of data (Gische, et al, 2020; King & Burch, 2020; King et al, 2020; Locey, 2020; Neves et al, 2020). Locey (2020) specifically noted how “the traditional approach in behavior science” as laid out in Tactics worked as a kind of safeguard against a “replication crisis” as it currently plagues traditional psychology (Open Science Collaboration, 2015).…”