THE EFFECTS OF THE QUESTION “WHAT IS THIS?” ON TACT-TRAINING OUTCOMES OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

Tact training is a common element of many habilitative programs for individuals with developmental disabilities. A commonly recommended practice is to include a supplemental question (e.g., “What is this?”) during training trials for tacts of objects. However, the supplemental question is not a defining feature of the tact relation, and prior research suggests that its inclusion might sometimes impede tact acquisition. The present study compared tact training with and without the supplemental question in terms of acquisition and maintenance. Two of 4 children with autism acquired tacts more efficiently in the object-only condition; the remaining 2 children acquired tacts more efficiently in the object + question condition. During maintenance tests in the absence of the supplemental question, all participants emitted tacts at end-of-training levels across conditions with no differential effect observed between training conditions.Key words: autism, language training, stimulus control, tacts, verbal behaviorSkinner (1957) defined the tact as a response “evoked by a particular object or event or property of an object or event” (p. 82) and considered it to be one of the most important verbal operants. Tacts are maintained by generalized social reinforcement and, thus, they are central to many social interactions. For example, the tact “That cloud looks like a horse” (under the control of a visual stimulus) could evoke a short verbal interaction about the sky or horses. The tact “My tummy hurts” (under the control of an interoceptive stimulus) could evoke soothing statements from a parent. A child who tacts “doggie” in the presence of a cat likely would evoke a correction statement from an adult, further refining two stimulus classes (i.e., dog and cat). These examples illustrate that, despite their topographical differences, the tact relations share antecedent control by a nonverbal discriminative stimulus (S^D) and are maintained by generalized social reinforcement.In habilitative programs for individuals with language impairments, autism, and intellectual disabilities, tacts often are taught for objects (e.g., ball), object features (e.g., color, size, shape), activities (e.g., jumping), prepositions (e.g., between), and emotions (e.g., sad) among others. Although conceptualized differently among therapeutic approaches, the tact relation occupies a central position in many early-intervention curricula. For example, Lovaas (2003) and Leaf and McEachin (1999) describe these relations as expressive labels and recommend that they be taught early in language training using three-dimensional objects accompanied by the supplemental questions “What is it?” or “What''s this?” Alternatively, Sundberg and Partington (1998) explicitly refer to the relation as a tact and recommend beginning instruction by including the question “What is it?” before eventually fading the question. In addition to these clinical manuals, the use of supplemental questions during tact training has appeared in some empirical studies on tact or expressive-label training (e.g., Braam & Sundberg, 1991; Coleman & Stedman, 1974), but not others (e.g., Williams & Greer, 1993). Regardless of whether tact training initially includes supplemental questions prior to response opportunities, tacts ultimately should be emitted readily under the sole control of the nonverbal S^D as well as when it happens to be accompanied by a question.Conceptually, at least four potential problems could arise from introducing supplemental questions early and consistently in tact training. First, the acquired responses might not be emitted unless the question is posed (i.e., prompt dependence). This problem would lead to few spontaneous tacts occurring outside the explicit stimulus control of the training environment. Williams and Greer (1993) compared comprehensive language training conducted under the stimulus control specified in Skinner''s (1957) taxonomy of verbal behavior to a more traditional psycholinguistic perspective with supplemental questions and instructions embedded within trials. For all three adolescents with developmental disabilities, the targets taught from the verbal behavior perspective were maintained better in natural contexts than those taught from the psycholinguistic perspective. However, because data were not reported for each individual verbal operant, it is unclear what specific impact their tact-training procedures had on the outcomes.The second potential problem is that the supplemental question might acquire intraverbal control over early responses and interfere with the acquisition of subsequent tact targets. For example, Partington, Sundberg, Newhouse, and Spengler (1994) showed that the tact repertoire of a child with autism had been hindered by prior instruction during which she was asked “What is this?” while being shown an object. The supplemental question subsequently evoked previously acquired responses and blocked the ability of new nonverbal S^Ds (i.e., objects) to evoke new responses. Partington et al. then showed that new tacts were acquired by eliminating the supplemental question from instructional trials.The third potential problem is that learners might imitate part of or the entire supplemental question prior to emitting the target response (e.g., “What is it” → “What is it … ball.”). For example, Coleman and Stedman (1974) demonstrated that a 10-year-old girl with autism imitated the question “What is this?” while being taught to label stimuli depicted in color photographs. Such an outcome results in a socially awkward tact repertoire and requires additional intervention to remedy the problem.Finally, including supplemental questions during tact training might impede skill acquisition, perhaps via a combination of the problems described earlier. Sundberg, Endicott, and Eigenheer (2000) taught sign tacts to two young children with autism who had prior difficulty acquiring tacts. In one condition, the experimenter held up an object and asked, “What is that?” In the comparison condition, the experimenter intraverbally prompted the participant to “sign [object name]” in the presence of the object. Sundberg et al. demonstrated substantially more efficient tact acquisition under the sign-prompt condition than when the question “What is that?” was included in trials; the latter condition sometimes failed to produce mastery-level responding.Teaching an entire tact repertoire while including supplemental questions (e.g., “What is it?”) during training trials could produce a learner who is able to talk about his or her environment only when asked to do so with similar questions. To the extent that this is not a therapist''s clinical goal, teaching the tact under its proper controlling variables may eliminate such problems. Of course, inclusion of supplemental questions during the early phases of language training could be faded over time such that the target tact relation is left intact prior to the end of training (Sundberg & Partington, 1998). However, the aforementioned studies have documented problems with using supplemental questions during tact training. Given the ubiquity of tact training in habilitation programs, the numerous problems that may arise when supplemental questions are included in training trials, and the limited research on the topic, further investigation is warranted. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to compare directly the rate of acquisition and subsequent maintenance of tacts taught using only a nonverbal S^D (i.e., object only) with tacts taught using a question (“What is this?”) in conjunction with the nonverbal S^D (i.e., object + question). The present study extends earlier research by examining both acquisition and maintenance and by including individuals with no prior history of formal tact training.     

THE EFFECTS OF FIXED-TIME REINFORCEMENT SCHEDULES ON FUNCTIONAL RESPONSE CLASSES: A TRANSLATIONAL STUDY

Research on functional response classes has applied significance because less severe forms of problem behavior have been found to co‐occur with more severe forms. In addition, the most severe forms of problem behavior are sometimes targeted for intervention without monitoring other less severe forms. In such cases, it is unknown whether and how untreated forms of problem behavior covary with the targeted behaviors. The present study employed a translational procedure (with button presses as the target behavior) to investigate response covariation under noncontingent reinforcement with typically developing preschoolers. The results indicated that noncontingent reinforcement was generally effective in decreasing all response class members when only one member was targeted.     

EFFECTS OF PREFERENCE AND REINFORCER VARIATION ON WITHIN-SESSION PATTERNS OF RESPONDING

We examined correspondence between preference assessment outcome and within‐session patterns of responding in one subject with autism. Responding maintained by a single highly preferred item resulted in a greater total number of responses, a slower decline in within‐session response rates, and a greater proportion of short interresponse times compared to responding maintained by varied moderately preferred (MP) stimuli. Presenting varied MP stimuli within the same session produced greater levels and more sustained responding than presenting those same stimuli individually.     

Discrete emotions elucidate the effects of crossed-categorization on prejudice

Three studies integrated crossed-categorization and discrete emotion approaches to prejudice and prejudice reduction. Study 1 made salient crossed-categorization using naturally occurring groups and examined the ability of emotions to account for prejudiced evaluations. Study 2 constructed novel crossed-categorizations in the laboratory to examine the role of appraisal-based emotions in evaluations of crossed-categories. Study 3 crossed gender and sexual orientation, for which elicited discrete emotions predict different evaluative responses than do shared and unshared group memberships alone. In all three studies, discrete emotions were able to account for the effects of crossed-categorization on evaluative measures of prejudice and revealed emotional paths to prejudice reduction which would be obscured by the evaluative measures alone. In Study 3, a discrete emotions approach better predicted evaluations than did shared and unshared group membership alone. These results converge to highlight the importance of discrete emotions in understanding the evaluative implications of crossed-categorization, especially for prejudice reduction.     

Cross-cultural differences in cognitive development: attention to relations and objects

Growing evidence indicates a suite of generalized differences in the attentional and cognitive processing of adults from Eastern and Western cultures. Cognition in Eastern adults is often more relational and in Western adults is more object focused. Three experiments examined whether these differences characterize the cognition of preschool children in the two cultures. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds from the two cultures (N=64) participated in a relational match-to-standard task in two conditions, with simple or richly detailed objects, in which a focus on individual objects may hurt performance. Rich objects, consistent with past research, strongly limited the performance of U.S. children but not Japanese children. In Experiment 2, U.S. and Japanese 4-year-olds (N=72) participated in a visual search task that required them to find a specific object in a cluttered, but organized as a scene, visual field in which object-centric attention might be expected to aid performance and relational attentional pattern may hinder the performance because of relational structure that was poised by the scene. U.S. children outperformed Japanese children. In Experiment 3, 4-year-olds from both cultures (N=36) participated in a visual search task that was similar to Experiment 2 but with randomly placed objects, where there should not be a difference between the performance of two cultures because the relational structure that may be posed by the scene is eliminated. This double-dissociation is discussed in terms of implications for different developmental trajectories, with different developmental subtasks in the two cultures.     

The role of skin color and facial physiognomy in racial categorization: Moderation by implicit racial attitudes

Previous research has not sufficiently addressed factors that define and moderate racial categorization judgments. This study independently manipulated skin color and facial physiognomy to determine their relative weighting in racial categorization. Participants (N = 250) judged faces varying on 10 levels of facial physiognomy (from Afrocentric to Eurocentric) and 10 levels of skin color (from dark to light) under either no time constraints, a modest time constraint, and under a stringent time constraint. Skin color was a powerful predictor of racial typicality ratings at all levels of facial physiognomy, but participants relied upon facial physiognomy more when rating faces of light than dark skin color. Skin color was a more important cue than facial physiognomy under no time constraints, but as time constraints became more severe, skin color's importance decreased, yet it remained a more important cue at extreme physiognomy levels. The relationship between skin color and racial typicality ratings was stronger for those with more negative implicit racial attitudes. These findings suggest the primary role of skin color in racial categorization and underscore the importance of implicit attitudes in explicit categorization judgments.     

The hubris penalty: Biased responses to “Celebration” displays of black football players

We posit that pride and arrogance are tolerated for high-status group members but are repudiated for low-status group members. Thus, we predict that Blacks, but not Whites, who behave arrogantly will be penalized. Specifically, we investigated the context of penalties against football players for “celebrating” after touchdowns. We propose that such celebrations reflect a racially biased “hubris penalty” because: (1) celebrations are primarily perceived as displays of arrogance (rather than exuberance), and (2) arrogance is penalized for Black but not White players. Three experiments demonstrate that all players who celebrated after touchdowns were perceived as more arrogant than those who did not celebrate. Although celebratory Black and White players were perceived as being equally arrogant, Black players were penalized with lower compensation whereas White players were not. Mediation analyses show that perceived arrogance mediated the effect of celebration on compensation, even when controlling for perceived aggression.     

Socially desirable responding and its elusive effects on the validity of personality assessments

Past studies of socially desirable self-reports on the items of personality measures have found inconsistent effects of the response bias on the measures' predictive validities, with some studies reporting small effects and other studies reporting large effects. Using Monte Carlo methods, we evaluated various models of socially desirable responding by systematically adding predetermined amounts of the bias to the simulated personality trait scores of hypothetical test respondents before computing test-criterion validity correlations. Our study generally supported previous findings that have reported relatively minor decrements in criterion prediction, even with personality scores that were massively infused with desirability bias. Furthermore, the response bias failed to reveal itself as a statistical moderator of test validity or as a suppressor of validity. Large differences between some respondents' obtained test scores and their true trait scores, however, meant that the personality measure's construct validity would be severely compromised and, more specifically, that estimates of those individuals' criterion performance would be grossly in error. Our discussion focuses on reasons for the discrepant results reported in the literature pertaining to the effect of socially desirable responding on criterion validity. More important, we explain why the lack of effects of desirability bias on the usual indicators of validity, moderation, and suppression should not be surprising.