Date of Award

8-2020

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Dr. Richard W. Malott

Second Advisor

Dr. Kelly Kohler

Third Advisor

Dr. Steven Ragotzy

Fourth Advisor

Dr. Alan Poling

Keywords

Auditory matching, echoics, autism, applied behavior analysis

Abstract

A generalized auditory matching repertoire is considered an early milestone in the development of verbal behavior (Greer & Keohane, 2006). Previous literature has demonstrated that the auditory matching (AM) protocol can improve echoics in individuals with developmental delays (Brown, 2005; Choi, Greer & Keohane, 2015; Du, Speckman, Medina, & Cole-Hatchard, 2017). However, some children experience difficulties with the match-to-sample (MTS) format of the AM protocol, if they are unable to perform delayed MTS tasks.

One alternative to MTS is the go/no-go procedure (Serna, Dube, & McIlvane, 1997), which requires the student to make a simple discrimination (i.e., same/different) between two stimuli that are presented simultaneously. Applying this format to auditory matching would eliminate the issue of the delay and allow for the almost-simultaneous presentation of two sounds—if they are continuously alternated until a response is made.

The purpose of this study, therefore, was to explore the effectiveness of this method for teaching auditory matching, and to evaluate whether mastery of this skill would improve six preschool children’s echoic responses. We used a nonconcurrent multiple-probe design to assess each participant’s performance on a list of echoics before, during, and after the intervention. Phases of the intervention began with simple sound discriminations that became successively more complex, until they involved word discriminations. Of the four students who achieved generalized word matching, one demonstrated improved articulation and two acquired a generalized echoic repertoire.

Comments

Fifth advisor: Dr. Carmen Jonaitis

Access Setting

Dissertation-Open Access

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