The effects of class-specific compound consequences embedded in an identity-matching task to establish arbitrary emergent relations were evaluated. A 3-year-old child with autism was taught identity relations between lowercase letters (Set 1) and uppercase letters (Set 2). A compound stimulus that consisted of an auditory component (dictated…

Three prereading children who named 0 to 3 of 20 targeted letters were taught to select the 20 printed letters when they heard spoken letter names. For all participants, letter-identification training resulted in naming for the majority of letters.

Using an identify matching-to-sample procedure, three typical prereaders who matched individual letters with high accuracy did not show high accuracy in matching three-letter printed words that differed only in the first letter. Teachers cautioned against assuming the children who can discriminate between individual letters can also discriminate…