Establishing mirror-image discriminations with progressively delayed extra-stimulus prompts

Progressively delayed extra-stimulus prompts were used to help normal preschool children discriminate left-right mirror-image stimuli. Two issues were addressed, the attention guiding properties of the prompts and the necessity for their gradual elimination. The study consisted of four experiments in which one or multiple prompt conditions were used. Each condition involved three prompts: a reference prompt for indicating the S+ and two superimposed prompts, one on the S+, and one on the S-. The prompts required subjects to respond to the orientation of the S+ (Orientation condition) or to the location of the reference prompt (Location condition); or allowed them to respond to the discriminative shapes of the superimposed prompts (Shape condition). The results showed the following. First, most subjects rapidly learned to respond to the Orientation prompts. Second, delayed orientation prompting was always successful regardless of how the prompts were eliminated. Delay training was never successful in either of the other two conditions. Third, the Orientation condition did not reliably produce learning unless the delayed prompting procedure was used.