Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who have limited spoken communication skills are commonly taught to mand by exchanging picture symbols. Competent manding via symbol exchange relies on conditional discrimination--that is, selecting the picture symbol that corresponds to the desired reinforcer. Picture Exchange Communication System…

How do children learn to communicate, and what do they learn? Traditionally, most theories have taken an associative, compositional approach to these questions, supposing children acquire an inventory of form-meaning associations, and procedures for composing / decomposing them; into / from messages in production and comprehension. This paper…

Examines the ability of preschool children to discriminate perceptually among novel forms frequently employed in referential communication tasks. (JMB)

Four low-functioning mentally retarded subjects learned conditional discrimination performance in two-comparison auditory-visual and visual-visual identity matching-to-sample paradigms. Results suggested that acquisition of both positive and negative conditional relations may occur when developmentally limited individuals are trained wth…

The call for behavioral objectives has stimulated speech-communication instructors to prepare students to be not only effective speakers but to be effectively able to relate to themselves and others across the socialization spectrum. (Author/MB)

A correction procedure, including interruption, physical guidance, verbal instruction, and repetition, was used to train five students with severe/profound mental retardation to reject unmatching referents to their gesture mands. Trainers are urged to assess student response when items not matching the referent of a prior request are offered.…

This research explores training of development in discrimination and communication skills in counselor trainees. It is concluded that trainees may improve their communication skills; improvement of discrimination skills was not demonstrated. (MFD)

Field independence, visual analysis, and spatial visualization were investigated and social communication skills were assessed in two groups of 25 first graders (chosen for either high or low verbal ability). (Author/PHR)

Four hearing Ss (20- to 30-years old) and 4 deaf Ss (8- to 14-years old) trained in speech discrimination using a vocoder (a device which converts speech into tactual vibrations received through the skin). Hearing Ss (artificially deafened by white noise transmitted through headphones) received from 20 to 80 hours of training in isolated words…

A naturalistic time delay strategy and a carefully graded discrimination sequence were used to teach requesting of high interest leisure activities to a student with severe and multiple disabilities. Implications for programming and instruction in the cross-curriculum area of communication are discussed. (Author/DB)

A study analyzing the effects of communication-discrimination training (utilizing a prepared program of encounter tapes) with conventional training in communication indicated that business education students who participated in the encounter tapes program exhibited significantly better discrimination skills than the students in the conventional…

The effectiveness of short-term training on two communication tasks was assessed with seven and one-half olds. Twelve subjects were trained in trios for six sessions on tasks requiring complete description of a design for a listener to reproduce, and tasks requiring communication of critical information for a listener to discriminate the same…

Provided is a selected review of research on the education and training of the severely to profoundly mentally retarded which was reported in academic and professional publications in the years 1969 - 1975. Sections present bibliographic information and annotations for approximately 164 citations in the following eight research categories (sample…