Evaluating the effects of outcome-specific consequences in teaching categories to individuals with autism

Document Type

Thesis

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Degree

M.S. Applied Behavior Analysis

Date Completed

2019

First Committee Member

Johnson, Cammarie

Second Committee Member

Thompson, Rachel

Third Committee Member

Dube, William

Abstract

"Past research has demonstrated that all elements in contingencies, including reinforcers, can become a part of an equivalence class. The research on outcome-specific consequences (OSC) remains largely basic and use of OSC is limited in applied settings. The current study examined if emergent relations can be generated when teaching food categories and arranging OSCs that are members of the relevant stimulus classes. This study employed a pretest-train-posttest sequence to examine the effects of 3 OSCs embedded in a tabletop arbitrary match-to-sample task to teach food categories to 2 individuals with autism spectrum disorders. Results from both participants indicated that following the training of 1 conditional discrimination including stimulus-stimulus relations from 3 food categories, 11 conditional discriminations or sets of performances emerged without direct teaching. These results were replicated across participants and with a second set of 3 food categories for 1 participant. Findings suggest that this procedure can be used in applied settings and may make teaching equivalence classes more efficient."

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