Reducing overselective stimulus control with differential observing responses

Abstract

Overselective stimulus control refers to discriminative control in which the number of controlling stimuli is too limited for effective behavior. Experiment 1 included 22 special-education students who exhibited overselective stimulus control on a two-sample delayed matching task. An intervention added a compound identity matching opportunity within the sample observation period of the matching trials. The compound matching functioned as a differential observing response (DOR) in that high accuracy verified observation and discrimination of both sample stimuli. Nineteen participants learned to perform the DOR and two-sample delayed matching accuracy increased substantially for 16 of them. When the DOR was completely withdrawn after 10 sessions, accuracy declined. In Experiment 2, a more gradual withdrawal of DOR requirements showed that highly accurate performance could be maintained with the DOR on only a proportion of trials for most participants. The results show that DOR training may lead to a general improvement in observing behavior.

The Effects of Standard and Enhanced Data Sheets and Brief Video Training on Implementation of Conditional Discrimination Training

“…Grow and LeBlanc (2013) described practice recommendations for conducting conditional discrimination training with children with autism that might minimize the likelihood of faulty stimulus control (Sidman, 1992) that sometimes occurs with simple to conditional discrimination training, particularly for the earliest learners. Many of the recommendations were based on the experimental literature on stimulus control (Green, 2001), and each recommendation has subsequently been demonstrated and replicated either in isolation or in some combination in applied studies with children with autism (Farber, Dickson, & Dube, 2017;Fisher, Retzlaff, Akers, DeSouza & Kaminski, 2019;Grow, Carr, Kodak, Jostad & Kisamore, 2011;Grow, Kodak & Carr, 2014;Vedora & Grandeliski, 2015). One recommendation in particular involved using a specially designed datasheet to provide the preset target stimulus and a counterbalanced three-item array of comparison stimuli for each trial.…”

Blocking of Stimulus Control in Children with Autism

“…It is fortunate that stimulus overselectivity and blocking may be reduced by teaching an overt precurrent ("observing") response to the S + (Doughty & Hopkins, 2011), as well as by teaching conditional discrimination from the beginning of a procedure, rather than following a simple discrimination (Green, 2001). Moreover, Farber et al (2017) suggested that differential observing responses (e.g., different tacts to sample stimuli) during matching-to-sample resulted in less overselectivity than nondifferential observing responses, where the response to the sample is the same on every trial, in children with autism (e.g., Reed, Altweck, Broomfield, Simpson, & McHugh, 2012). Differential observing responses verify the discrimination of stimulus features that differ among the samples (e.g., by tacting the sample stimuli).…”

“…Researchers have suggested that blocking is likely related to stimulus overselectivity, in which some relevant properties of a compound stimulus fail to acquire stimulus control (e.g., Cengher, Budd, Farrell, & Fienup, 2018;Cipani, 2012;Farber, Dickson, & Dube, 2017;Lovaas, Schreibman, Koegel, & Rehm, 1971;Ploog, 2010). Such narrow attending may be maladaptive and is sometimes associated with children with autism (Dube et al, 2016;Lovaas et al, 1971).…”

Assessment and treatment of escape from attention in the form of conversation

“…Functional communication was defined as the participant vocally stating one of the three preferred attention types (i.e., hand squeeze, massage, or high five) or escape from attention (i.e., “Go out, please”) while pointing to the communication card. Pointing to the communication card was part of the response requirement to ensure that Tyson attended to the communication board (i.e., as an observing response; Farber, Dickson, & Dube, 2017). During functional communication training, we collected data on the accuracy of responding.…”