Association for Behavior Analysis International

Reporting on events in the past is ubiquitous in our day to day interactions. Despite the importance of these responses, research in assessing and treating difficulties with these responses has rarely been conducted by behavior analysts. In this symposium, we will present several studies that provide behavioral accounts of memory. First, a series of basic studies will be described that illustrate examples of episodic stimulus control in rats. Second, we will discuss an applied assessment that tests episodic reporting in children without advanced vocal verbal repertoires. Finally, we will discuss two methods that might increase recall responses in children. In one, differential reinforcement alone successfully taught two children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder to respond to events in the past. We will discuss the implications of existing repertoires on these results. In the other, neurotypical children were taught a series of tact to evaluate the effects on recalling past events. Throughout we will review previous behavioral research in remembering and how these new studies extend our existing understanding of these complex responses.

Audiences should have knowledge on a behavioral approach to verbal behavior. Audiences should also understand the basic components of an operant chamber for rats.

Reporting about past events and behaviors is an everyday activity for most of us and is critical for normal functioning. Cognitive psychologists have dominated research in what they have called episodic memory which has been considered a uniquely-human process. However, studies using complex conditional discrimination training have demonstrated that animals can learn to respond under the control of particular events, that is, when and where the events occurred. We describe several studies that illustrate examples of this What-Where-When remembering in rats. Rats were trained on an incrementing non-matching to sample task with odor stimuli using a five-term contingency under which responding to odors not previously smelled in a particular context during the current session was required for reinforcement. Accurate performance on such trials was demonstrated in all three rats and demonstrated a form of episodic stimulus control. We provide a behavioral account of such remembering in terms of contextual control of generalized conditional discrimination.

The ability to accurately describe personal experiences is socially significant and refers to episodic memory outside of behavior analysis. However, it is only sometimes clear if someone can not report events in the past if it is a memory problem, a skill deficit, or a stimulus control issue. This talk will discuss a method to assess episodic memory skills in autistic children. Six participants played with three different toys in three different contexts. Later, they were asked to answer questions about what they did outside and inside the room they played in. The questions were asked in terms of what they did (the specific event), the toy (the actions of the event), and the event’s context (the specific place). Episodic memory skill levels were individualized for participants. On average, the participants responded to all three questions more accurately when inside the room rather than outside. We will discuss the implications of the results for treatment considerations.

Teaching recall skills to children is a rarely studied subject despite the significance of these skills across several domains of everyday life. This research aims to test the effect differential reinforcement alone has on increasing accurate reporting. Participants in this study were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder or Down syndrome and did not reliably report events in the past. We used a modified component analysis to determine the effect simple differential reinforcement has on increasing reporting. Results show variable success with only differential reinforcement. We will also review a series of secondary measures that provide alternative ways to interpret the effects of treatment, such as a description of error patterns. The results provide insight into the necessity of more complex teaching methods like probe fading that are paired with differential reinforcement and provide new insight into methods of teaching children complex verbal behavior skills like answering questions about events in the past.

This study aims to evaluate the effects of tact training and tact overtraining on the accuracy of recalling past events. Three neurotypical children (4-5-years-old) participated in the study and a multiple baseline design was implemented. During probes, participants played with different toys and games, including a card game (critical activity) during which the experimenter presented 10 images and the participant looked at them in silence. After 10min, they were asked to answer questions about past events (e.g., What pictures did you see today at the playing room?). Intervention consisted of two phases: In phase 1 the experimenter implemented tact training to assess the number of stimuli participant could recall after 10min. In phase 2 an over training of tact responses was implemented, in which the participant had to emit tact responses 5 times in the presence of each stimulus. Data collection is still in progress and partial results with participant 1 shows that, so far, tact training alone s did not increase recalling contradicting previous research.