Progressively delayed extra-stimulus prompts were used to help kindergarten children discriminate left-right mirror-image stimuli in four experiments. Results showed that most subjects rapidly learned to respond to the orientation prompts; delayed orientation prompting was always successful regardless of how the prompts were eliminated; and the…

Findings of a series of studies involving kindergarteners indicated that the delay technique was highly effective when the prompt had the same configuration as the correct stimulus and the prompt's position prevented control by irrelevant location cues. The effectiveness of delayed orientation prompting was not always matched by its efficiency.…

Children and adults were trained and tested on formation of novel simple discriminations and conditional stimulus relations. Subjects who formed these sets were trained and tested on formation of stimulus equivalence classes. A modest majority of children matched directly paired stimuli; a few matched indirectly paired stimuli. All normal adults…

Examined reversal of emergent simple discriminations through stimulus contiguity. In experiment one, Baseline and Reversal phases were positive for most children. Experiments two through four examined protocol aspects that possibly contributed to successful reversal of the form discrimination; found that reversed discrimination usually was a…

Three studies involving groups of four- to five-year-old children examined whether the discriminative properties of prompts are critical for establishing a difficult (septagon, octagon) discrimination through time delay. Results confirm superiority of multiple-stimulus, distinctive-feature prompts, implying that stimulus dimensions of prompts are…

Attempted to maximize the efficacy of time-delay discrimination training of 16 preschoolers. No indications were found of effects of precision response pretraining on the outcome of time delay of static cues. Transfer and lack of transfer of stimulus control were associated with nonshifts and shifts of response loci, respectively. (RH)

Previous studies have shown that after being trained on A-B and A-C match-to-sample tasks, adults match not only same-class B and C stimuli (equivalence) but also BC compounds with same-class elements and with different-class elements (BC-BC). The assumption was that the BC-BC performances are based on matching equivalence and nonequivalence…

Compared two procedures for establishing and reversing stimulus control transfer across simple discrimination in children. Results indicated that both procedures were more effective in establishing that, in reversing stimulus control transfer, stimulus contiguity was more effective than match-to-sample training; and both procedures were more…

Two time-delay conditions for teaching complex visual discriminations to 14 normal preschoolers, 12 with mild mental retardation, and 11 with moderate mental retardation were compared. Results indicated that for all populations and stimuli, time delay of multiple dynamic distinctive-feature prompts produced learning, while time delay of the single…

Investigates to what extent discrimination learning through time delay of multistimulus, distinctive-feature prompts is a function of the inclusion and configuration of the S-prompt. Results of two experiments with children aged four and five indicate that most subjects did not learn the task assigned unless two distinctive-feature prompts were…

Trained preschoolers and adults on three sets of successive discriminations with stimuli labeled A, B, and R. Tested for derived stimulus-response relations and stimulus-stimulus relations. Adults displayed class-consistent B-R and A-B performances over all conditions. Children's display of class-consistent B-R performance varied by training…