Date of Award
12-1994
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Dr. Jack L. Michael
Second Advisor
Dr. Dale Brethower
Third Advisor
Dr. Paul Mountjoy
Fourth Advisor
Dr. David Sluyter
Abstract
Kerr, Meyerson and Flora (1977) devised a series of six small learning tasks that could be used to assess developmentally disabled individuals on the typical tasks to be performed in a school setting or sheltered workshop and required very simple equipment. The tasks were imitation, position discrimination, visual discrimination, match-to sample, auditory discrimination and combined auditory visual discrimination. Davinc (1990) suggested that there may be transitional skills between AVC levels IV and V not found by Kerr et al. Davine (1990), Wilson (1991) and Buder (1992) devised a series of experimental tasks designed to test this notion. All used nonidentity matching tasks with the result that none of these tasks were clearly intermediate to AVC levels IV and V and were often more difficult than AVC level VI.
In the present experiment, a new experimental step was designed to extend the AVC test to higher functioning individuals with a level above the highest existing level, VI. Four containers were used with correct selection of the container requiring simultaneously attending to two stimulus dimensions, container type and color, with two categories within each dimension for a total of four variables, red, yellow, box and can. The new step was significantly more difficult than AVC level VI and exhibited most of the characteristics of the previous AVC levels.
Access Setting
Dissertation-Open Access
Recommended Citation
Butler, Charles P., "An Extension to the AVC Discrimination Test by the Addition of One Level Above AVC Level VI" (1994). Dissertations. 1803.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations/1803