EFFECTS OF THE NUMBER OF EXEMPLARS ON ACQUISITION AND GENERALITY OF PERFORMANCE CHILDREN DIAGNOSED WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER (ASD)

Abstract

Considering the importance of generality, one of the seven dimensions of Applied Behavior Analysis, the goal of the present study was to compare the acquisition and the generalization degree of tact and intraverbal repertoires when trained with single exemplar antecedent stimulus versus multiple-exemplar antecedent stimuli, with two children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The children’s parents were taught on how to implement these repertoires via Discrete Trial Teaching (DTT). The effect of the introduction of the intervention was evaluated by a non-concurrent multiple baseline design between participants. The effect of each experimental condition was evaluated by comparing data from “single exemplar” versus “multiple exemplar” conditions throughout training. Then, for a given repertoire (tact, for example), some relations were taught with multiple exemplars while others, with only one exemplar. On the generalization phase, performance accuracy in all discriminations was measured with new exemplars/antecedent stimuli. For Guto and Manuel it was necessary, on average, 25.5 and 15 trials, respectively, to teach the relations with three exemplars, and 17 and 22 trials to teach with one exemplar. During the generalization phase, the average accuracy in the relations with three exemplars was 83.5% and 100% for Guto and Manuel, respectively; with one exemplar, the averages were 74 and 61%. The data showed that the multiple-exemplar presentation during training of verbal repertoires resulted in higher generalization degree without increasing training difficulty. The present study encourages multiple-exemplar training in applied context.Keywords: generalization, multiple exemplars, verbal repertoires.