A emergência da abstração em crianças autistas através do treino do comportamento de ouvinte

Abstract

The process of narrowing the stimulus control to a property or to a combination of properties of a stimulus, usually called abstraction, has generated increasingly interest in different conceptual and applied perspectives within Behavior Analysis. However, it seems that there is a lack of knowledge integration among them, which may interfere in a more comprehensible description of the abstraction. Besides being a theoretical question, it may contribute for the development of systematic procedures regarding the necessary steps to establish abstract responding in children with or without language delays in applied settings. The two studies that are described here investigated whether teaching listener relations would lead to the emergence of tact responses and abstract responding by undergraduate students, and children with autism and intellectual disability. Experimental stimuli were non familiar compound stimuli that consisted of a shape and a color, and a shape and a pattern. The general strategy was to teach listener relations, characterized by the selection of pictures in the presence of dictated words, to three combinations between the properties of the pictures, which constituted the diagonal of a matrix, through matching-to-sample tasks. Then, the emergence of tact responses in the presence of the pictures corresponding to the three combinations was tested. In Study 1, the bidirectional relations (listener and tact) were established before the introduction of the posttest which verified the emergence of listener relations and tact responses to six untaught combinations between the properties. In Study 2, regardless of the emergence of tact responses to the three combinations, the emergence of listener relations and tact responses to six untaught combinations as well as to the isolated properties was tested. In Study 2, the emergence of impure mand responses to the nine combinations between properties was also verified. Results of Study 1 xvi demonstrated that establishing the bidirectional relations (listener and tact) to three combinations between the properties lead to the emergence of new listener relations and tact responses to the properties presented in untaught combinations. Results from Study 2 replicated those from the Study 1 once the participants that showed the establishment of the bidirectional relations to the three combinations between properties also showed the emergence of listener relations and tact responses to the properties presented in untaught combinations and to the isolated properties. These participants also demonstrated the emergence of impure mand responses. By contrast, the participant who did not tact the three combinations responded by chance during the listener relations posttests to the untaught combinations, and demonstrated restricted stimulus control. Questions that are discussed: (1) the emergence of tact responses after listener relations teaching, (2) the emergence of listener relations and tact responses to untaught combinations between the properties and to the isolated properties, and (3) the emergence of impure mand responses.