Discriminações auditivo-visuais e a emergência de tatos em crianças com Transtorno do Espectro Autista: uma replicação sistemática

Abstract

Establishing auditory-visual conditional discriminations is a key step in protocols for teaching children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, there is a variety of procedures that have been used for teaching this repertoire. Recently, Fisher et al. (2019) showed that procedure package (which included 'conditional only' discriminative training, use of echoic response as a differential observation response, identity-match prompt with progressive delay, and error correction) favored the learning of auditory-visual discriminations in four children with ASD, and the emergence of tacts of the visual stimuli for two of them. The present study performed a systematic replication of Fisher et al. (2019), removing initially the requirement for echoic responses from the procedure package, in order to evaluate the role of this component in the acquisition of auditory-visual discriminations and tacts in children with ASD. A multiple baseline across stimuli design was used. The results showed that echoic response requirement was necessary for the participants to learn most of the auditory-visual discriminations, and that two participants presented emergence of tacts to some of the visual stimuli. The procedure package efficiency on teaching listener responses, possible treatments interference effects, component analysis, and the role of echoic on the emergence of tacts are discussed.