Association for Behavior Analysis International

Equivalence-based instruction (EBI) focuses on the development of classes of functionally related but physically diverse stimuli and is relevant to skill acquisition programming because it involves teaching minimal numbers of relations to produce classes of stimuli in an efficient manner. The purpose of this symposium was to study EBI procedures to teach a variety of skills with individuals with autism, other disabilities, and typically developing children. The first presentation describes a study examining selection- and production-based EBI on emergent academic skills and verbal behavior exhibited by children with disabilities. The results indicated that EBI procedures produced skill acquisition across participants and potential interactive effects between EBI strategies and verbal behavior levels. The second presentation discusses EBI procedures to teach music skills and promote social interactions in dyads of individuals with autism and typically developing children. The results indicated that EBI was effective at increasing correct taught and untaught relations as well as social interactions within and across child dyads. The last presentation describes a study using EBI-based tactics with video models to teach disguised mands to individuals with autism. The results showed that EBI tactics were effective with most participants; additional components were needed to produce relations with one participant.

This intermediate instructional level symposium will have a target audience of applied behavior analysts, clinicians, practitioners, and behavior therapists who provide clinical services to individuals with autism and other disabilities. Other target audience members will include researchers interested in equivalence-based instruction for skill acquisition programming and other potential applications.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have deficits in communication, engage in restrictive and repetitive behaviors and may have impairments in socially appropriate behaviors and social interactions. Evidence based practices have been used to teach academic, social and leisure skills to children with ASD. Equivalence-based instruction (EBI) has been used to teach academic skills to children with ASD using individual instruction across a variety of skills. However, less is known about teaching music skills using EBI to individuals with ASD. The current experimental study evaluated the effects of group instruction to teach music skills to two children with ASD and two typically developing children while evaluating social interactions during and following the intervention. The participants were placed into dyads consisting of one child with ASD and one typically developing child. Overall, there was an increase in correct responses for taught and untaught relations for both dyads across instruments, an increase in appropriate social behaviors during session and play outside of sessions between the participants in each dyad. However, some considerations are needed and additional research in this area is warranted.

This study used a multiple baseline single-case research design to evaluate the efficacy of equivalence-based instruction (EBI) when used to teach participants with autism the relations between direct mands (e.g., "turn off the light"), disguised vocal mands (e.g., "It's too bright in here!"), and disguised gestural mands (e.g., placing one’s hand in between the trajectory of light and their eyes). We utilized a combination of procedures including video models and matching-to-sample (MTS) tasks, we first taught three participants with autism the relations between these direct and disguised mands. Following the emergence of stimulus equivalence, we tested whether the participants would demonstrate in situ responding to the disguised mands (i.e., transfer of function). All participants demonstrated the emergence of stimulus equivalence, and two of the three participants demonstrated in situ responding. Behavioral skills training was subsequently conducted with the participant that did not demonstrate transfer of function, resulting in successful in situ responding.