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Differential outcome effect in
a language discrimination task by a child with autism. Asun Puche Echegaray and Lourdes Guerrero Sastre Ramon Llull University, Spain A verbal 6 year old child with autism was trained on two-choice receptive label task using two different reinforcement procedures in an attempt to determine which condition would produce a higher rate of acquisition. Condition A consisted of stimulus-specific reinforcement in which a correct response was followed by a unique edible reinforcer. In condition B the participant was trained to discriminate a different pair of stimuli through a random and balanced presentation of two reinforcers contingent to correct responding. Before each condition, pre-training data were obtained to determine whether the child knew the labels. Pre-training for stimuli in Condition B was extended to 80 trials since data showed a consistent discrimination between the pair of stimuli but opposite to their semantic meaning. During pre-training the same neutral consequence was delivered independent of the response. In Condition B, when reinforcement was re-established contingent to correct responses, the participant needed fewer trials to reverse the incorrect discrimination than he had needed to learn the discrimination in Condition A. The unexpected finding that the participant was able to discriminate a pair of opposites stimuli without prior training and further the fact that the discrimination was incorrect from a pure language standpoint did not allow to test for the differential outcome effect within this study. But interestingly, it showed that reversing an acquired discrimination required less training than learning a new language discrimination. Keywords: differential outcome effect, discrimination training, stimulus-specific reinforcement, autism |
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