FACILITATING RELATIONAL LEARNING IN MR CHILDREN

因为刺激的基本属性，例如相似性-相异性和 新颖性与熟悉性本质上是相关的，并且嵌入在 无处不在的环境背景，检测这种关系的能力 信息对于适应性功能至关重要。有大量的 有证据表明，智力低龄的儿童——包括弱智儿童和 年轻的非弱智儿童——在某些方面表现出明显的缺陷 需要关系响应的任务（Greenfield，1985；Soraci 等人， 1987 年、1989 年）。在目前实验范式的扩展中 研究者在之前的研究中使用过，本次研究的具体目的 建议是分析和增强关系特征 刺激阵列，以促进怪异等任务的表现 和匹配到“样本。奇数和任意匹配到样本尤其重要 单个刺激没有离散的任务的清晰示例 信息价值独立于它们与刺激的关系 包含他们的背景；相反，个人的信息价值 这些任务中的刺激在很大程度上取决于周围环境 它们出现了（Dinsmoor，1985；Sidman & Stoddard，1968）。证据趋同 来自本研究人员和其他人进行的各种研究 表明，之间的性能差异的一个关键因素 弱智儿童和非弱智儿童的敏感性不同 相关信息（例如，Soraci、Deckner、Baumeister，1989）。一个专业 拟议研究的目标是提供与 关系学习理论模型的发展。在提议的 研究强调视觉结构的作用 阵列有助于检测相关刺激关系。刺激 还检查与刺激相关的组织变量 检测和区别性响应。拟议的研究分为 分为两个部分：奇怪和刺激组织。

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.