Teaching Children with Intellectual Disabilities Numbers Using Stimulus Equivalence Methods on a Tablet Device

Abstract

A conditional discrimination training procedure using a matching-to-sample task was implemented by a tablet device to teach children with intellectual disabilities numbers. An initial aim was to investigate the effectiveness of using the tablet device to implement an intervention to teach academic skills with as little therapist involvement as possible. Effects of the training arrangement of relations taught were also investigated. Nine numbers were divided into three groups and three types of stimuli were involved: numerals, words and quantities. The results showed that 1 out of 4 participants had demonstrated mastery over trained relations, as well as provide some evidence of emergent responding, generalisation and maintenance across all three sets of numbers. One participant demonstrated limited mastery over trained relations, as well as limited evidence of emergent responding. The final two participants did not demonstrate any evidence of mastery over trained relations. In addition, effects of training arrangements were difficult to assess. Further research should look into implementing interventions using tablet devices in other ways.