Symbolic and attentional processes: stimulus control, recombinative generalization, and observing responses

Abstract

The application of procedures based on Stimulus Equivalence, in studies conducted within the National Institute of Science and Technology on Behavior, Cognition and Teaching (INCT-ECCE), has shown very robust results regarding reading comprehension; however, learning transfer has shown variability, since it seems to depend not directly on symbolic relationships, but on abstraction (for example, through the presentation of multiple examples of a task) of units of stimuli that participate in these relationships. This planning will continue translational studies within the scope of INCT-ECCE aimed at transferring Programmed Teaching technology from basic research to Computer-Assisted Instruction in the context of teaching Portuguese reading to three populations: (a) probing and teaching basic reading units to Brazilian children and young people with normal development and insufficient school performance, during the literacy period, in Brazil; (b) probing and teaching basic reading units of Portuguese as a heritage language to children with normal development residing in Japan who will return to Brazil; © probing and teaching complex reading units to literate people with normal development and reading difficulties. The project contains a theoretical study, a technical study and a line of experimental studies. The theoretical study plans to review the concepts of "recombinative generalization", "conditional or secondary reinforcement", "discriminative stimulus", "observation responses", "distinctive aspect", and "common aspect" in the literature on operant and respondent discriminative processes with compound stimuli. The goal will be to expand understanding and use of the concept of "discrimination" in situations of planning Programmed Teaching of simple discriminations and conditional discriminations, while maintaining focus on their contributions to the formation of equivalence classes and teaching generalized reading comprehension. The technical study will identify viable conditions for explicit requirements for observation responses with eye movement recording in tasks from the experimental line of studies, and will aim to transfer eye movement tracking technology from USP to UFSCAR. The experimental line will investigate basic processes of conditional discrimination during MTS tasks with visual and/or auditory stimuli with the aim of planning, developing and refining effective procedures in producing equivalence classes and robust and generalized transfer for new textual stimuli, so as to allow predictability and control over teaching generalized reading comprehension. Planning includes an inter-institutional exchange period, for a period of one month, with a member of the INCT-ECCE network of collaborators, for the execution of part of the technical study and teaching activities. Planning also includes the proposal for a Research Internship Abroad Scholarship (BEPE), for a period of six months, with the aim of collecting and analyzing data. The results of the studies will be disseminated in the form of scientific articles, software and presentation of papers at conferences. (AU)