Does performance on the ABLA test predict receptive name recognition in children with autism?

Abstract

Researchers have hypothesized that for people with autism, the deficits in learning certain tasks may be a function of deficits in learning the prerequisite auditory, visual and motor discriminations. The Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities (ABLA) Test is a useful tool by which these discriminations are assessed. This study investigated whether performance on ABLA Level 6, an auditory-visual discrimination, predicts performance on a receptive language task with children with autism. Participants included five children who passed ABLA Level 6, four children who passed ABLA Level 4 but failed ABLA Level 6, and one child who passed ABLA Level 3 but failed ABLA Level 4. Standardized prompting and reinforcement procedures were used to attempt to teach each participant to respond correctly on ten name-recognition tasks. During a task pictures of two objects were placed in randomly alternated left-right positions, and a child was required to point to the picture that was named. Training on a task continued until either a pass or a fail criterion was met, whichever came first. Three of the Level 4 participants passed all ten of the picture name recognition tasks, and one passed eight of the ten tasks. The Level 3 participant passed two of the ten tasks. All five of the Level 6 participants passed all picture name recognition tasks. The difference in performance between children at ABLA Level 4 and Level 6 was not significant at the .05 level. These results suggest that children with autism at ABLA Level 4 or 6 are approximately equally capable of learning receptive name recognition tasks.