Conditional Discrimination in Mentally Retarded Subjects: Programming Acquisition and Learning Set

Abstract

In Experiment 1, 3 subjects with retardation were exposed to two visual-visual arbitrary matchingto-sample problems each day. One conditional discrimination was presented under trial-and-error conditions, and the other was presented under a component training procedure. The latter began by establishing the comparison discrimination and its rapid reversal. The successive discrimination between the sample stimuli was established through differential naming. Then, sample naming was maintained in conditional discrimination sessions in which the same sample was presented in blocks of consecutive trials. Block size was decreased across sessions until sample presentation was randomized as in trial-and-error training (but with naming maintained). Two subjects initially learned only with component training. The performance of the 3rd subject was inconsistent across conditional discriminations. One of the successful subjects ultimately learned rapidly and consistently with trial-anderror procedures. Experiment 2 sought to demonstrate learning set in the other 2 subjects. Elements of the component training procedure were withdrawn over successive conditional discriminations. Ultimately, 1 subject nearly always learned under trial-and-error conditions, and the other learned under trial-and-error conditions combined with differential sample naming.

Stimuli with identical contextual functions taught independently become functionally equivalent

“…A paradigmatic example is Harlow's (1949) learning set: He taught successive simple discriminations between two-stimuli sets to rhesus monkeys with novel stimuli in each set and found that the monkeys learned new discriminations faster and faster in spite of the fact that each stimulus set contained stimuli not presented before. This basic finding was also found in human beings with first-order (Saunders & Spradlin, 1990, 1993 and second-order (Pérez-González, Spradlin, & Saunders, 2000) conditional discriminations. Another paradigmatic study that shows a process with no associations among antecedent stimuli was Vaughan's (1988).…”

Using a Combined Blocking Procedure to Teach Color Discrimination to a Child With Autism

“…Some researchers have demonstrated success in teaching conditional discriminations to people with severe learning difficulties. Saunders and Spradlin (1989, 1990, 1993) described a blocking procedure to teach conditional discriminations. They used a match-to-sample procedure in which a single sample was presented consecutively across a number of trials (e.g., a block of 32 trials).…”

Probability of Equivalence Formation: Familiar Stimuli and Training Sequence

“…, 2000;Randell & Remington, 1999;Roche, BarnesHolmes, Smeets, Barnes-Holmes, & McGeady, 2000;Sidman & Tailby, 1982) and in different modalities (e.g., Annett & Leslie, 1995;Belanich & Fields, 1999;Hayes, Tilley, & Hayes, 1988;O'Leary & Bush , 1996); it has been shown both in normal adults and children (e.g., Lipkins , Hayes, & Hayes, 1993;Pi lgrim, Chambers, & Galizio, 1995) and in persons with mental disabilities (e.g., Saunders & Spradlin, 1993). Some studies have shown that equivalence classes are not so easily formed as was first assumed, especially after a linear series training structure (Arntzen & Holth , 1997, 2000a, 2000b.…”