EMERGENCE OF ORDINAL RELATIONS UNDER CONTEXTUAL CONTROL IN AUDITORY IMPAIRED CHILDREN

Abstract

The present study aimed to expand the investigation of computer-controlled teaching procedures using contextual control over ordinal relations. Five auditory impaired children with experimental history with simple and conditional discrimination procedures served as participants. The computer screen was divided into “choice area” (bottom part) – where stimuli where presented randomly – and “building area” (upper part) – where the chosen stimuli were moved to. Two stimuli were presented simultaneously and the participant should select them sequentially (e.g., A1?A2 in the presence of a circle and the color “green”; A2?A1 in the presence of a triangle and the color “red”). Experimental designed was composed of the following phases: pre-test, training, probes, transitivity tests, baseline revision, and substitutability tests. The accuracy criterion was three consecutive correct trials. All participants met the accuracy criterion and responded consistently to the transitivity and connectivity tests. Results showed evidence of contextual control over the emergent relations, suggesting that establishing simple and conditional control was pivotal to the emergence of ordinal classes under contextual control. Keywords: stimulus control, contextual stimulus, ordinal relations, auditory impaired children.