Equivalência de estímulos e generalização recombinativa no ensino de leitura para alunos com deficiência intelectual e autismo

Abstract

Considering the importance of teaching reading and writing for individuals with intellectual disabilities and autism, employing strategies that can benefit and enhance the teaching and learning process, the objective of the present study was to investigate the effects of teaching conditional relations and the emergence of classes of equivalent stimuli between dictated words, pictures and written words in the emergence of reading and generalized reading for students with intellectual disabilities and autism. Two students with intellectual disabilities and autism, aged 8 years old, enrolled in the 2nd year of Elementary School, participated in the research. The method included familiarization, pre-test, teaching of relationships between dictated word and picture (AB) and dictated word and written word (AC), tests of emerging relations of relations between pictures and words (BC and CB) and reading assessments, repeated for three sets of words, followed by a general reading post-test. A multiple probe design was used between sets of words. The results revealed that both participants achieved a maximum performance of 100% accuracy in the AB relationship. However, the AC P1 relationship showed significant variation in the performance of AC relations of the in Group 1; they did not complete the teaching steps with this set of words. Given the participant's performance, strategies were inserted to encourage engagement in activities (token economy). In subsequent groups, P1 maintained 100% correct responses in AB relations and he showed improvements performance in AC relations, reaching 100% correct responses. In the emerging relationships between picture and written words (BC) and written words and pictures (CB), the participant presented 100% correct responses in the tests with stimuli sets 2 and 3. In the reading assessments, P1 named the words under the control of letters and syllables, mainly in words from Set 2; also he used the word “mage” to name most of the words. P2 presented percentages above 90% correct in AB relations and above 80% correct when teaching AC relations in the three stimuli sets. In the BC and CB tests, the participant had 100% accuracy in the three stimuli sets. The main difficulties presented by P2 were when faced with the letters c and g, which were decoded as “ç” (naming ‘boça’ instead of mouth) and “j” (naming ‘majo’ in front of wizard), respectively. The results suggest that the teaching procedure contributed to the establishment of relationships between pictures, dictated words and written words, however it did not contribute to the emergence of word reading. Future studies should review the words used, seeking to use words without complexities or difficulties from the Portuguese language, as well as using potentially reinforcing items to promote the participants' engagement and motivation.