Teaching Manual Signs to Adults With Mental Retardation Using Matching-to-Sample Procedures and Stimulus Equivalence

Abstract

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.

Using equivalence‐based instruction to teach college students to identify logical fallacies

“…The direct teaching of a few relations across stimulus classes can yield more equivalence relations than were initially instructed; that is, the learner learns more than the teacher explicitly taught. Programs of EBI have been used to train a variety of skills to individuals diagnosed with learning disabilities (Stromer & Mackay, ), autism spectrum disorder (LeBlanc, Miguel, Cummings, Goldsmith, & Carr, ), intellectual disabilities (Elias, Goyos, Saunders, & Saunders, ), brain injuries (Cowley, Green, & Braunling‐McMorrow, ), and academic challenges (Lynch & Cuvo, ).…”

Key Word Signing Usage in Residential and Day Care Programs for Adults With Intellectual Disability

“…KWS as a method can be applied to signs from any sign language or system. Usually, signs from the local sign language of persons who are deaf are used (e.g., signs from American Sign Language—Chambers & Rehfeldt, ; Elias, Goyos, Saunders, & Saunders, ; Ziomek & Rehfeldt, , and signs from British Sign Language—Chadwick & Jolliffe, ; Rudd, Grove, & Pring, ) providing a quasi‐limitless vocabulary. Sometimes specific sign systems are used, consisting of a limited set of signs (e.g., AmerInd with fewer than 200 signs; Daniloff, Lloyd, & Fristoe, ; and “Spreken Met Ondersteuning van Gebaren” (SMOG), with about 500 signs; Loncke, Nijs, & Smet, ).…”

Editorial

“…Pesquisas têm sido realizadas em pessoas com surdez pelo modelo das relações de equivalência e que consideram que o sinal pode ser compreendido tanto como um análogo à palavra ditada, quando apresentado em tarefas de seleção, quanto um análogo a nomeação ou leitura, quando esta for a topografia alvo (Carvalho 2005;Elias, Goyos, Saunders & Saunders, 2008;Pereira & Almeida-Verdu, 2012;Gatch & Osborne, 1989), inclusive quando envolve relações numéricas (Magalhães & Assis, 2011;Souza & Assis, 2005).…”