Assessing generative braille responding following training in a matching-to-sample format.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Special Education
• Learning Sciences

Background:

• Effective methods for teaching literacy to individuals with visual impairments are crucial.
• Understanding the generalization of learned skills in literacy acquisition is important for educational strategies.
• Matching-to-sample (MTS) has shown promise in various learning contexts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of a specific matching-to-sample (MTS) training procedure on sighted college students.
• To assess the emergence of untrained literacy-related skills following MTS instruction involving braille and print stimuli.
• To determine if MTS training facilitates generative learning in the context of tactile and visual literacy.

Main Methods:

• Sighted college students were taught to select printed text letters based on braille sample stimuli.
• The training utilized a matching-to-sample (MTS) format.
• The emergence of untrained skills, including character construction, transcription, and reading, was evaluated.

Main Results:

• MTS instruction led to the untrained emergence of constructing print characters from braille samples.
• Participants also demonstrated the untrained ability to construct braille characters from print samples.
• Transcription of print from braille sentences and vocal reading of braille passages also emerged without direct training.

Conclusions:

• The study provides evidence for the generative nature of learning through MTS instruction in literacy.
• MTS training effectively established foundational repertoires that generalized to related, untrained literacy skills.
• These findings support the use of MTS as a viable instructional strategy for developing braille and print literacy.