FACILITATING RELATIONAL LEARNING IN MR CHILDREN

因为刺激的基本属性，如相似性-相异性和 新奇与熟悉是内在联系的， 无处不在的环境背景，检测这种关系的能力， 信息对适应性功能至关重要。有大量 有证据表明，智力年龄低的儿童，包括弱智儿童和 年轻的非弱智儿童--表现出明显不足的表现， 需要关系响应的任务（格林菲尔德，1985; Soraci等人， 1987年，1989年）。在实验范式的扩展中， 研究人员在以前的研究中使用了这种方法，其具体目的是 建议是分析和增强的关系特性， 刺激阵列，以促进对任务的表现， 和匹配“样本。奇异性和任意样本匹配尤其重要。 明确的例子，其中个别刺激没有离散的任务， 信息价值独立于它们与刺激的关系， 包括他们的背景;相反，个人的信息价值 这些任务中的刺激在很大程度上是由周围环境决定的， 他们出现（Dinsmoor，1985; Sidman & Stoddard，1968）。趋同证据 来自本研究者和其他人进行的各种研究 这表明，一个关键因素之间的性能差异， 弱智儿童和非弱智儿童的差异敏感性， 关系信息（例如，Soraci，Deckner，Baumeister，1989）。一个主要 这项研究的目的是提供相关证据， 发展关系学习的理论模型。拟议 研究，重点放在视觉结构的作用 阵列，以促进检测相关的刺激关系。刺激 组织变量也被检查，因为它们与刺激有关 检测和区分响应。拟议的研究分为 分为两个部分：古怪和刺激组织。

Because basic properties of stimuli such as similarity-dissimilarity and novelty-familiarity are intrinsically relational and are embedded in ubiquitous environmental contexts, the ability to detect such relational information is essential to adaptive functioning. There is substantial evidence that children that have low mental ages-both retarded children and young non-retarded children--exhibit markedly deficient performances on tasks that demand relational responding (Greenfield, 1985; Soraci et al., 1987, 1989). In an extension of experimental paradigms the present investigator has utilized in previous research, the specific aim of this proposal is to analyze and enhance the relational characteristics of stimulus arrays in order to facilitate performance on tasks such as oddity and match-to"sample. Oddity and arbitrary match-to-sample are particularly clear examples of tasks in which individual stimuli do not have discrete informational value independent of their relations to the stimuli that comprise their context; rather, the informational value of individual stimuli in these tasks is in large part determined by the surround in which they appear (Dinsmoor, 1985; Sidman & Stoddard, 1968). Converging evidence from various studies conducted by the present investigator and others suggests that a critical factor in the performance discrepancies between retarded and non-retarded children is a differential sensitivity to relational information (e.g., Soraci, Deckner, Baumeister, 1989). A major goal of the proposed research is to provide evidence relevant to the development of a theoretical model of relational learning. In the proposed studies, emphasis is placed on the role of the structure of the visual arrays in facilitating detection of relevant stimulus relations. Stimulus organization variables are also examined as they relate to stimulus detection and discriminative responding. The proposed studies are divided into two sections: Oddity and Stimulus Organization.