Field effectiveness of stimulus equivalence for teaching reading skills to children with autism

Stimulus equivalence involves teaching two conditional discriminations that share one stimulus in common and testing all possible conditional discriminations not taught (Saunders & Green, 1999). Despite considerable research in the laboratory, applied studies of stimulus equivalence have been limited (Vause, Martin, Marion, & Sakko, 2005). This study investigated the field-effectiveness of stimulus equivalence in teaching reading skills to children with Autism. Participants were four children with Autism receiving centre-based intensive behavioural intervention (lBI) treatment. Three of the participants, who already matched pictures to their dictated names, demonstrated six to eight more emergent performances after being taught only to match written words to the same names. One participant struggled with the demands of the study and his participation was discontinued. Results suggest that stimulus equivalence provided an effective and efficient teaching strategy for three of the four participants in this study.

Interview with David Sharron

This is a radio interview between host Mike Saunders and David Sharron, Head of Special Collections and Archives, James A. Gibson Library, Brock University. The interview discusses the Library's Autism Collection. It is 23:51 minutes in length and was originally broadcast on the program "Inquisitive Minds" on CFBU-FM Brock University Student Radio, March 27, 2014.