Transfer in the learning of verbal behavior. A single-case design for a teenager with autistic behaviors

Abstract

The experiment was carried out with a 14-year-old male with autistic behavior. Two types of verbal behavior were analyzed. The first type was a three-term contingency or simple discrimination that included the words "Near" and "Far" as the participant`s verbal responses. The second type was a conditional discrimination that included these words as stimuli presented by the experimenter before a selection response by the participant. The simple discrimination was explicity trained and the transfer to the conditional discrimination was observed. Results showed the emergence of the conditional discrimination without explicit training.