Multicomponent procedure to teach conditional discriminations to children with autism

Five children with autism with a history of failing to acquire conditional discriminations learned to discriminate objects in response to spoken names or to match amounts to numbers with a combined blocking procedure. The procedure for teaching object discriminations involved (a) presenting the same spoken word until 10 consecutive correct responses occurred and (b) keeping the left-right location of the objects on the table constant. After mastery, the requirement for changing the spoken word was gradually reduced. Finally, the spoken words were presented randomly. In the final stage, the objects were located randomly. The procedure to teach number matching was similar. All children learned these discriminations with few errors. This procedure may be beneficial in teaching conditional discriminations to children with learning difficulties.