A case report of an autistic boy. Selective responding to components of bidimensional visual and auditory stimuli

A case study was reported in which a 9-year-old male autistic boy was initially trained to discriminate between two auditory stimuli and two visual stimuli. He was then tested for overselective responding to bidimensional combinations of the four stimuli. It was hypothesized that the overselectivity results reported in previous studies were partially a function of a procedure in which autistic children were reinforced for responding in the presence of a multidimensional stimulus complex and then tested with individual stimuli. The child in the present investigation, with the alternative procedure, did not demonstrate overselective responding. Two interpretations of the results were presented, neither of which was consistent with an overselectivity theory. Future research should delineate the specific conditions which produce overselective responding, and suggest methods to facilitate more adaptive responding of autistic children.