Comparing Stimulus Equivalence-Based Instruction to a Video Lecture to Increase Religious Literacy in Middle-School Children

Abstract

Being familiar with world religions and their diverse practices is referred to as religious literacy. The present study compared the effects of stimulus equivalence-based instruction (EBI) and video lecture (VL) to increase religious literacy in middle-school students; 10 participants were assigned to either the EBI or the VL group. Participants in the EBI group were taught five 6member equivalence classes using match-to-sample (MTS) software on a computer. Within each class of (1) Judaism, (2) Islam, (3) Christianity, (4) Hinduism, and (5) Buddhism, the visual stimulus members were (A) name of the religion, (B) major religious symbol, (C) sacred text, (D) notable religious figure, (E) name of religious service leader, and (F) notable celebrated holiday. The VL participants were given an opportunity to complete a fill-in written worksheet while viewing a video lecture about the 5 religions using the same stimuli as the EBI group. Participant responding in each group was compared across worksheet, oral, and MTS pretests and posttests. The results showed that 5 of 5 participants in the EBI group formed equivalence classes but only 1of 5 did so in the VL group. Class-consistent responding generalized to oral vignettes to a greater degree for the EBI participants than for the VL participants. In addition, at an approximately 2-week follow-up, EBI participants maintained class-consistent responding to a greater degree than VL participants did. Duration measures showed that even though EBI was more effective, EBI training did require more time than the VL did. Although not explicitly programmed for, social distance survey scores showed that participants improved equally in their ratings of the acceptability of people from other faiths following training, regardless of training type. Thus, EBI may be an effective method to teach schoolchildren about religious literacy.

Comparing two equivalence‐based instruction protocols and self‐study for teaching logical fallacies to college students

“…With regards to response generalization in the present study, increases in class-consistent responding observed during computerized tests for the participants in the EBI groups did not generalize to written test performances. This contrasts with the results of various prior EBI studies (e.g., Albright et al, 2016aAlbright et al, , 2016bFerman et al, 2020;Fields et al, 2009b). One possible explanation for this finding is that the written tests were inadequately sensitive to detect such changes.…”

“…Although Brodsky and Fienup (2018) and Fienup and Critchfield (2011) noted there are advantages of EBI relative to traditional classroom or analog control condition teaching procedures (e.g., Critchfield, 2014;Ferman et al, 2020;Lovett et al, 2011;O'Neill et al, 2015), the results of the current study only moderately favor EBI over self-study. Despite the superiority of EBI during computer tests, there was a lack of differences among groups in written posttest performances.…”

“…These were compared to a third group of control participants that was meant to emulate independent self‐study that a student might do on their own. We included the self‐study group to serve as a traditional classroom or analog control condition teaching procedure (e.g., Critchfield, 2014; Ferman et al., 2020). Performances were compared on (a) computerized pretests and posttests assessing the formation of equivalence classes, (b) stimulus generalization trials within the computerized tests, (c) stimulus and response generalization measures assessed via a written test, and (d) maintenance tests of class‐consistent responding 1 week after the posttests.…”

Using stimulus equivalence‐based instruction to teach young children their caregivers' contact information

“…The presentation order of the trial blocks for the baseline and derived relations followed a sequence known as a simple‐to‐complex protocol (Adams, Fields, & Verhave, 1993; Cowley et al, 1992; Ferman et al, 2020; Fields et al, 2009; Groskreutz, Karsina, Miguel, & Groskreutz, 2010). In this protocol, derived relations of increasing complexity are only tested after mastery has been demonstrated for prerequisite trained baseline relations (Table 2).…”

“…EBI has been used to teach a variety of skills with different populations of learners. These include world religions with middle school children (Ferman et al, 2020), geography to children diagnosed with autism (LeBlanc et al, 2003), coin values to children with autism (Keintz et al, 2011), fraction–decimal relations to typically developing students who demonstrated deficits (Lynch & Cuvo, 1995), music skills to a boy with autism (Arntzen, Halstadtro, Bjerke, & Halstadtro, 2010), and early braille literacy skills to children with visual impairments (Toussaint & Tiger, 2010), among others. With adults, these include studies in which EBI has been used to teach brain–behavior relations (Fienup et al, 2010), functions of behavior (Albright et al, 2016), statistics (Albright, Reeve, Reeve, & Kisamore, 2015; Fienup & Critchfield, 2010, 2011), and portion‐size estimation (Trucil, Vladescu, Reeve, DeBar, & Schnell, 2015), among others.…”