Dissertation Defenses

Doctoral Dissertation Announcement

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Candidate: Laura L. Grow

Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy

Department: Psychology

Title: A Comparison of Methods for Teaching Auditory-Visual Conditional Discriminations to Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Committee:
Dr. R. Wayne Fuqua, Chair
Dr. Cynthia Pietras
Dr. James Carr
Dr. Linda LeBlanc
Dr. Ivy Chong

Date: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 10:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
1509 Wood Hall

Abstract:
Early and intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) is an approach to treating the behavioral deficits and excesses observed in children with autism spectrum disorders that involves comprehensive programming arranged in a developmental sequence. The magnitude of improvement in the overall functioning of children receiving EIBI has stimulated additional research and widespread clinical dissemination through the publication of EIBI curricular manuals. Many EIBI manuals programs recommend teaching conditional discriminations using the simple/conditional method. Initially, component simple discriminations are taught in isolation and in the presence of a distracter stimulus. Finally, conditional discriminations are presented to the learner that includes stimuli previously taught as simple discriminations. Although the simple/conditional method is often recommended in EIBI curricular manuals, issues of faulty stimulus control and overselectivity may arise during the simple/conditional method. As a result, there has been a call for the use of alternative teaching procedures such as the conditional only method, which involves conditional discrimination training from the onset of intervention. No studies to date have compared simple/conditional and conditional only methods for teaching conditional discriminations in applied settings. Therefore, the purpose of the current study is to compare the simple/conditional and conditional only methods for teaching conditional discriminations to children with autism spectrum disorders. Three children between the ages of four and seven participated. An adapted alternating treatments design is used to compare the simple/conditional and conditional only methods. The results indicate that the conditional only method is a more reliable teaching method. In addition, error patterns emerged during training using the simple/conditional method. The results are discussed in terms of the implications for current teaching practices in EIBI programs.