Stimulus presentation order in receptive identification tasks: A systematic replication.

Abstract

Conflicting recommendations exist in the literature regarding the optimal order of stimulus presentation when teaching auditory-visual conditional discriminations. The present study examined the generality of a previously demonstrated advantage of presenting the auditory sample before visual comparisons (sample-first condition) over the reverse sequence (comparison-first condition). Participants were four typically developing 5- and 6-year-old boys. The procedures of Petursdottir and Aguilar (2016) were systematically replicated with the addition of a prompted error correction trial following each incorrect response. Overall, there were more instances of quicker mastery in the sample-first condition (four of seven evaluations) than in the comparison-first condition (two of seven evaluations). A comparison-first advantage was associated with slower acquisition in both conditions than in the remaining evaluations, and an analysis of stimulus and position bias yielded tentative evidence for unwanted sources of stimulus control.