The present study aimed to investigate the blocking of stimulus control in three children with autism. We used a go/no-go procedure in a standard blocking paradigm. In Phase 1, we established one of two sounds or colored squares as a discriminative stimulus for touching a tablet screen. In Phase 2, a colored square was added to the sound or a sound was added to the colored square in a stimulus compound. The discrimination training continued as in Phase 1. We subsequently tested discriminative control by each of the single stimuli separately and by the compounds. Finally, after testing with no programmed consequences, we reestablished the original discrimination and replicated the test of stimulus control. The results support previous experiments by demonstrating that the establishment of discriminative control by a second stimulus by adding it to a previously established discriminative stimulus in a compound was blocked by the earlier discrimination training in all three participants. We discuss procedural details that may be critical to avoid the blocking of stimulus control in the applied field, particularly with respect to the acquisition of skills that involve multiple stimuli, such as joint attention, social referencing, and bidirectional naming.

本研究旨在调查三名自闭症儿童的刺激控制障碍。我们在标准的阻塞范例中使用了执行/不执行过程。在第1阶段，我们建立了两种声音或彩色方块之一，作为对平板电脑屏幕进行歧视的刺激。在阶段2中，将彩色方块添加到声音中，或将声音添加到刺激化合物中的彩色方块中。如第1阶段那样继续进行区分训练。我们随后分别测试了单个刺激物和化合物的区分控制。最后，在没有任何程序性后果的测试之后，我们重新建立了原始的判别并重复了刺激控制的测试。结果表明，通过将第二种刺激添加到化合物中先前建立的歧视性刺激中来建立歧视性控制，这在所有三个参与者中都受到了较早的歧视训练的阻碍，从而支持了先前的实验。我们讨论了可能对避免应用领域中的刺激控制产生阻碍至关重要的程序细节，尤其是在获得涉及多种刺激的技能方面，例如联合注意力，社交参照和双向命名。