Resumen de Emergência de relações auditivo-visuais via treino por CRMTS para crianças com TEA

Jacqueline Iukisa Faustino Calado, Grauben José Alves de Assis, Adriano Alves Barboza, Romariz da Silva Barros

• English

  People diagnosed with autism may have difficulties in discriminating auditory stimuli. Previous researches suggest that training discriminative repertoire with auditory specific consequences may help in the acquisition of such, particularly through the inclusion of the consequent auditory stimuli in equivalence classes. When it comes to discriminative repertoires involving sentence construction, such kind of results were never documented in the literature.

  Therefore, this study verified the emergence of auditory-visual control relations after visualvisual sentence construction training through CRMTS using auditory consequences. Four children participated. They had been previously diagnosed with ASD, with ages between 6 and 8 years old, and could perform a pre-requisite reading and writing repertoire. The Assessment of Basic Learning Skills (ABLA) and the Peabody Vocabulary Test – III (PPVT) were used to assess, consecutively, their discriminative and listener repertoire. A multiplebaseline design across participants was used to assess the effects of the independent variable over the dependent variable. As pre-requisites, the participants should follow instructions, perform at least 80% at a pre-test probe (reading and writing test) and should not present Self- Injurious Behavior. At the reading and writing test, participants were exposed twice to each one of the 12 trials on reading and constructing phrases. After the pre-test, participants were tested for sensorial defensiveness to auditory stimuli. They were exposed to several songs (either instrumental or voiced) presented at a laptop. Vocal utterances, hands over ears, and facial expressions were recorded, as well as if the children looked to the sound source (and for how long). During the baseline, auditory-visual relations with the training sentences were tested (melodies or voices as sample stimuli for constructing sentences), and a table top procedure was used to present the related stimuli. After a pre-training designed to teach visual-visual and auditory-visual relations (with different stimuli used only during this task), a visual-visual training was performed (using animations as sample stimuli for construction of four from the 12 previously tested sentences) with auditory consequences (melodies or voices), using the Proler® software. The software recorded the right and wrong responses, and a second experimenter watched the sessions (which were videotaped) in order to perform an interobserver agreement of the baseline sessions, which resulted in 99% agreement. By the end of each training session, auditory consequences were presented as sample stimuli for the construction of 12 sentences. As results, two out of four children showed performance accuracy above 80% to auditory-visual relations. Results extend the findings reported in the literature while demonstrate the effectiveness of using CRMTS with auditory class-specific consequences for the emergence of auditory-visual relations with people diagnosed with ASD, if compared to the traditional MTS procedures. Also, this research debates the predictive potential of the ABLA assessment, when it comes to more complex repertoires, which involve tasks that are more distant from the MTS-model. This study contributes to the field documenting class expansion using specific consequences involving high cost responses and sentence construction.

• português

  Pessoas diagnosticadas com autismo podem apresentar dificuldades na discriminação de estímulos auditivos. Pesquisas anteriores sugerem que o treino discriminativo com consequências específicas auditivas pode auxiliar na aquisição desse tipo de repertório. O presente estudo verificou a emergência de relações de controle auditivo-visual após treino visual-visual de construção de sentenças através de CRMTS com consequências auditivas. Quatro crianças participaram do estudo. Elas haviam sido previamente diagnosticadas com TEA, tinham idades entre 6 e 8 anos e um repertório prévio de leitura e escrita de 12 sentenças. Relações auditivo-visuais com essas sentenças foram testadas durante a linha de base (melodias ou vozes como modelo para a construção das sentenças). Em seguida, foi realizado o treino visual-visual (animações como modelo para a construção de quatro das 12 sentenças) com consequências auditivas (melodias ou vozes). Ao final de cada sessão de treino, as consequências auditivas eram apresentadas como modelo para a construção das 12 sentenças. Duas das quatro crianças demonstraram desempenho acima de 80% para as relações auditivo-visuais avaliadas. Os resultados estendem os achados da literatura quando demonstram a efetividade do uso de CRMTS com consequências auditivas específicas para a emergência de relações auditivo-visuais com pessoas com TEA. Este estudo apresenta como avanço a demonstração da expansão de classes com consequências específicas utilizando respostas de maior custo e construção de sentenças.