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An examination of the component skills of auditory identity matching: Implications for the ABLA

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(2001)UM: AAI3016079; MT: Print; FO: Print; PO: Human; AG: Adulthood (18-yrs-and-older); MD: Empirical-Study.

Abstract

Auditory discriminations are involved in everyday situations such as recognizing individuals by the sound of their voice and repeating words spoken by others. The ability to perform an auditory matching task may be important to facilitate learning of more complex auditory discriminations. Recently, conditional discriminations in the auditory modality have been investigated by several researchers (Dube, McIlvane, Callahan, & Stoddard, 1993; Harapiak, Martin, & Yu, 1998; Cummings & Williams, 1999; and Walker, Lin, & Martin, 1994). The predominate amount of research has been conducted by persons investigating the auditory discrimination levels of an assessment tool, the Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities (ABLA). Walker, Lin, and Martin (1994), in an examination of the ABLA and expanding the skills evaluated by this tool, developed an auditory discrimination task to assess auditory identity matching. Auditory identity matching is presently not evaluated by the ABLA. Walker et al.'s research resulted in the conclusion that the auditory identity matching skill is located between levels four and five on the Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities (ABLA) discrimination hierarchy. Procedural issues in their investigation, however, may have led their task to actually measure an auditory discrimination (non-identity) or an auditory visual discrimination instead of an auditory identity matching skill. Due to researchers continuing to utilize the Walker et al. (1994) procedure, an investigation into the skills examined by this procedure was needed. In addition, the component skills of an auditory identity matching skill needed to be identified. Incorporating information from the stimulus overselectivity literature, the investigators broke down auditory identity matching into a progression of three components for easier acquisition of this skill. In addition, when discrimination training of the components was not successful within-stimulus prompting procedures as well as some extra stimulus procedures were used. Participants may not have acquired auditory discriminations before this study due to overselecting on visual discriminations. The proposed study had three goals. First, investigators hoped to examine the Walker et al. (1994) procedure in a more procedural sound manner to determine if persons who passed the test used auditory identity matching skills or auditory-visual discrimination skills. Second, four possible component skills of auditory identity matching were examined. Investigators attempted to systematically teach four component skills to persons with developmental disabilities. These component skills may lead a person to make an auditory identity matching discrimination. Third, this study provided further evidence to confirm the ABLA hierarchy. Finally, investigators measured any changes in the participants' abilities on the Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities, a revised Walker et al. procedure and on untrained component skills as they acquired or did not acquire the four component skills (auditory discriminations). The results are discussed in terms of implications for conditional discrimination research and the ABLA. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

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