Auditory-visual Relations Research Articles

Auditory-visual relations via equivalence class formation in children with TEA

Estudos recentes sugerem que é promissora a estratégia de ensinar relações auditivo-visuais via formação de classes de equivalência para crianças com TEA. No entanto, mostram certa inconsistência entre o potencial preditivo do teste ABLA e as discriminações efetivamente obtidas. O presente estudo investigou se há diferenças na emergência de relações visuais-visuais quando as relações de linha de base envolvem relações totalmente visuais versus relações auditivo-visuais em crianças no Nível 4 do teste ABLA. Participaram seis crianças com TEA, divididas de acordo com a consequência específica utilizada (Grupo 1 consequência auditiva e Grupo 2, consequência visual). Foi realizado o treino de relações de identidade A1A1 e B1B1, com consequência específica S1 (Grupo 1) e F1 (Grupo 2) e A2A2 e B2B2 com a consequência específica S2 (Grupo 1) e F2 (Grupo 2), e testadas as relações visuais-visuais AB e BA, para ambos os grupos, relações auditivo-visuais SA e SB, Grupo 1, e relações visuais-visuais FA e FB, Grupo 2. Os resultados não apontaram diferença significativa na emergência de relações consequência-estímulo entre os grupos, sugerindo que dificuldades de emergência de relações visuais-visuais em estudos anteriores não podem ser atribuídas totalmente ao fato de essas relações terem como elementos nodais estímulos auditivos.

Classes de Estímulos por Bebês de até 24 Meses de Idade,

Resumo Neste estudo investigou-se a emergência de classes de equivalência generalizada, com inclusão de reforçadores específicos em bebês de 24 meses. Relações auditivo-visuais (AB e AC) foram ensinadas, com consequências específicas (D), para 5 bebês entre 18 e 20 meses de idade. Testes de nomeação e de relações emergentes foram realizados (BC, CB, AD, DE e EB, com semelhança física dos estímulos E e B). Três participantes formaram de classes de equivalência, incluindo os reforçadores específicos (ABCD), e dois deles apresentaram nomeação consistente. Dois participantes apresentaram desempenho correspondente à equivalência generalizada. Os resultados indicaram (a) a inédita formação de classes de equivalência generalizada com inclusão de reforçadores específicos em bebês, e (b) que a nomeação pode não ser condição necessária para a formação de classes.

Equivalence Class Formation in Individuals With Autism: Predictions From ABLA-R Levels.

Children who are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often fail to show equivalence class formation. This may be related to their difficulty in learning the programmed baseline conditional discriminations. The present study investigated equivalence class formation after training visual identity-matching performance with auditory class-specific consequences in 6 individuals who were diagnosed with ASD and who achieved different levels (Levels 4, 5, and 6) on the Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities-Revised (ABLA-R). The potentially emergent relations were all arbitrary (relations between completely dissimilar stimuli): visual-visual (AB and BA) and auditory-visual (SA and SB). None of the participants who achieved ABLA-R Level 4 or 5 responded in accord with equivalence class formation. They did not present any emergent arbitrary conditional relations (either visual-visual relations or auditory-visual relations). Only participants who achieved ABLA-R Level 6 demonstrated equivalence class formation. These findings are consistent with the predictive ability of the ABLA-R with regard to the acquisition of discriminations and to the emergence of the same type of conditional relations and the same hierarchy of complexity.

Emergence of Auditory-Visual Relations via Equivalence Class Formation in Children Diagnosed with Autism

The acquisition of auditory-visual discriminations can be difficult for children diagnosed with autism. Training with class-specific consequences may be one way to facilitate acquisition of such discriminations in this population, compared to the standard all-visual procedure. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the emergence of visual-visual and auditory-visual relations in children diagnosed with autism using class-specific consequences in a simpler training protocol that was based on identity matching. Four children participated in the study. The procedure comprised the following phases: 1) identity matching training (AA and BB), 2) tests for AB and BA emergent conditional discriminations, 3) training of non-emergent AB and BA relations (if necessary), 4) test for emergent SA auditory-visual discrimination, 5) auditory-visual discrimination training (if necessary), and 6) test for emergent SB auditory-visual discrimination. Two of the four participants showed emergence of equivalence relations involving visual (AB and BA) and auditory-visual (SA and SB) stimuli. These results document the inclusion of auditory stimuli (spoken words) in equivalence classes when presented as class-specific consequences in training. The data encourage further investigation of procedures for establishing auditory-visual discriminations via equivalence class formation with class-specific consequences in children diagnosed with autism. Two other participants did not reach the learning criterion for arbitrary conditional discrimination training. One possibility is that these difficulties are due to a lack of a prerequisite repertoire. Such data confirm findings of other studies and illustrate the difficulty associated with establishing these types of discriminations in low-functioning children diagnosed with autism.

Emergence of auditory-visual relations from a visual-visual baseline with auditory-specific consequences in individuals with autism.

Empirical studies have demonstrated that class-specific contingencies may engender stimulus-reinforcer relations. In these studies, crossmodal relations emerged when crossmodal relations comprised the baseline, and intramodal relations emerged when intramodal relations were taught during baseline. This study investigated whether auditory-visual relations (crossmodal) would emerge after participants learned a visual-visual baseline (intramodal) with auditory stimuli presented as specific consequences. Four individuals with autism learned AB and CD relations with class-specific reinforcers. When A1 and C1 were presented as samples, the selections of B1 and D1, respectively, were followed by an edible (R1) and a sound (S1). Selections of B2 and D2 under the control of A2 and C2, respectively, were followed by R2 and S2. Probe trials tested for visual-visual AC, CA, AD, DA, BC, CB, BD, and DB emergent relations and auditory-visual SA, SB, SC, and SD emergent relations. All of the participants demonstrated the emergence of all auditory-visual relations, and three of four participants showed emergence of all visual-visual relations. Thus, the emergence of auditory-visual relations from specific auditory consequences suggests that these relations do not depend on crossmodal baseline training. The procedure has great potential for applied technology to generate auditory-visual discriminations and stimulus classes in the context of behavior-analytic interventions for autism.

Cross-modal transitivity in a California sea lion (Zalophus californianus)

The ability of an experimentally experienced female California sea lion to form transitive relations across sensory modalities was tested using a matching-to-sample procedure. The subject was trained by trial-and-error, using differential reinforcement, to relate an acoustic sample stimulus to one member from each of two previously established visual classes. Once the two auditory-visual relations were formed, she was tested to determine whether untrained transitive relations would emerge between each of the acoustic stimuli and the remaining stimuli of each 10-member visual class. During testing, the sea lion demonstrated immediate transfer by responding correctly on 89% of the 18 novel transfer trials compared to 88% on familiar baseline trials. We then repeated this training and transfer procedure twice more with new auditory-visual pairings with similar positive results. Finally, the six explicitly trained auditory-visual relations and the 56 derived auditory-visual relations were intermixed in a single session, and the subject's performance remained stable at high levels. This sea lion's transfer performance indicates that a nonhuman animal is capable of forming new associations through cross-modal transitivity.

Exclusion Learning and Emergent Symbolic Category Formation in Individuals With Severe Language Impairments and Intellectual Disabilities

We evaluated formation of simple symbolic categories from initial learning of specific dictated word-picture relations through emergence of untaught or derived relations. Participants were 10 individuals with severe intellectual and language limitations. Three experimental categories were constructed, each containing 1 spoken word (Set A), 1 photograph (Set B), and 1 visual-graphic "lexigram" (Set C). Exclusion-based learning procedures were used to teach first the 3 auditory-visual relations (A-B relations) and then the 3 visual-visual relations (B-C relations) for each category. Seven participants acquired these initial relations. The untaught relations C-B and A-C were then assessed to evaluate the emergence of symbolic categories. Participants demonstrated virtually error-free performances on C-B and A-C derived relations. The study helps to define operationally a highly useful procedural path for systematic instruction in symbolic functioning for persons with intellectual and language disabilities associated with autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.

Effects of exemplar training in exclusion responding on auditory-visual discrimination tasks with children with autism.

In Experiment 1 with 7 autistic children (3 to 6 years old), auditory-visual exclusion was tested with four unknown word-item pairs for each child. One child demonstrated exclusion and positive learning outcomes unequivocally with the four auditory-visual relations. Three children demonstrated exclusion, though inconsistently, and failed to demonstrate positive learning outcomes. The remaining 3 children failed to demonstrate exclusion; therefore, the learning outcome test was omitted. The 6 children who failed to demonstrate exclusion or positive learning outcomes participated in the second experiment. In Experiment 2, nonreinforced exclusion trials with four new unknown word-item pairs were included in trial blocks that also contained reinforced exclusion trials with the unknown exemplars from Experiment 1. Five children demonstrated exclusion with the new word-item pairs, and 4 of these demonstrated positive learning outcomes in further tests. One child demonstrated some limited but inconsistent improvement in exclusion and was not tested for learning outcomes. The data suggest that contemporaneous presentation of multiple examples of reinforced exclusion facilitated nonreinforced exclusion performances and that the resulting reduction in errors was critical in producing accurate learning outcomes with the new word-item discriminations.

Three-month-olds' expectations about auditory-visual relations

Three-month-olds' expectations about auditory-visual relations

Limitations on infants' response to rate-based auditory-visual relations.

To study rate-based intersensory matching, infants first were familiarized with different auditoryvisual relations and then were tested for detection of auditory-visual equivalence. Across several different experiments, 4-, 6-, and 8-month-old infants first were habituated with (a) a single, temporally concordant auditory-visual compound stimulus, (b) a single, temporally discordant compound stimulus, (c) 2 different, temporally concordant compounds, or (d) a silently moving visual stimulus. A consistent and robust finding was a preference for the visual stimulus that moved at a novel velocity, indicating that the temporal attributes of the visual component dominated responsiveness. Only 1 experiment yielded evidence, albeit limited, of intersensory matching; infants habituated with a silently moving visual stimulus preferred the sound-specified visual stimulus in the presence of the rapid sound but not in the presence of the slow sound. Most objects and events in an infant's everyday world are represented by concurrent attributes in different sensory modalities. Many of these attributes specify the same information and, if an infant is to have a unified perceptual experience, he or she must be able to respond to the relational aspects of these attributes. Without a doubt, temporal attributes such as synchrony, duration, rate, and rhythmic pattern are the most frequent and important sources of auditory-visual relational information (Massaro & Cohen, 1990; Summerfield, 1979). Because of the ubiquity and importance of temporal attributes for intersensory integration, infants' detection of temporally based intersensory relations has been investigated rather intensively. Investigations of infants' responsiveness to auditory-visual relations based on synchrony (Bahrick, 1987, 1988; Kuhl & Meltzoff, 1982; Lewkowicz, 1986, 1992c; Lawson, 1980; Lyons-Ruth, 1977;Spelke, 1981), rate (Lewkowicz, 1985, 1992c; Spelke, 1979; Spelke, Born, & Chu, 1983), rhythm (Allen, Walker, Symonds, & Marcell, 1977; Mendelson & Ferland, 1982), and duration (Lewkowicz, 1986) suggest that infants begin to respond to temporally based auditory-visual correspondence between 3 and 6 months of age. This general pattern of findings is complicated, however, by the fact that responsiveness to different temporal attributes appears to emerge at different points in early development (Lewkowicz, 1992a,b, in press) and by the fact that inconsistency, rather than uniformity, characterizes the findings in this area of research.

ESTABLISHING AUDITORY STIMULUS CONTROL OVER AN EIGHT‐MEMBER EQUIVALENCE CLASS VIA CONDITIONAL DISCRIMINATION PROCEDURES

Two eight-member equivalence classes of visual stimuli were established during three phases of a training program. In Phase 1, two training arrangements were compared. In one, 3 subjects were taught on different trials to select from a single pair of comparison stimuli (A1, A2) in response to eight sample stimuli that were trained in pairs (B1, B2; C1, C2; D1, D2; E1, E2). In the second arrangement, subjects were taught to select from four pairs of comparisons (B1, B2; C1, C2; D3, D2; E2, E2) in response to two samples (A1, A2). Training with the single pair of comparison stimuli resulted in the development of equivalence relations (B1C1, B2C2, D1B1, D2B2, B1E1, B2E2, C1D1, C2D2, C1E1, C2E2, D1E1, D2E2, and their reciprocals) between the sample stimuli without direct training of these relations. In the other training arrangement, these relations among the comparison stimuli developed in the performance of 1 subject only. In Phase 2, three new pairs of stimuli (F1, F2; G1, G2; H1, H2) were substituted for three of the original pairs (B1, B2; C1, C2; D1, D2) and the training arrangements for the groups were reversed. Following training, the performances that showed equivalence relations on the probes in the first phase also showed equivalence relations in the second phase. If such relations did not develop in the first phase, they did not do so in the second phase. In Phase 3, relations between stimuli across the two previous phases (e.g., B1F1, B2F2, B1G1, B2H2, C1F1, etc.) were investigated. The 4 subjects whose performances showed the development of these relations were taught to select one stimulus from each class (E1 and E2) in response to a verbal label (I1 and I2) and then were tested to see if the verbal label controlled responding to the remaining members of the class (e.g., I1A1, I2A2, I1B1, I2B2, etc.). For 3 subjects, this generalized control occurred; for the 4th, generalization occurred only after verbal training with a second pair of visual stimuli (F1 and F2). In retests several months later, these auditory-visual relations were found to be intact or, if not, were recovered without direct training.