To evaluate whether children with and without autism could exhibit (a) functional equivalence in the course of yoked repeated-reversal training and (b) reversal learning set, 6 children, in each of two experiments, were exposed to simple discrimination contingencies with three sets of stimuli. The discriminative functions of the set members were yoked and repeatedly reversed. In Experiment 1, all the children (of preschool age) showed gains in the efficiency of reversal learning across reversal problems and behavior that suggested formation of functional equivalence. In Experiment 2, 3 nonverbal children with autism exhibited strong evidence of reversal learning set and 2 showed evidence ...
<.04. Finally, when researchers returned to the original contingencies there were no significant differences in the number of sessions needed to re-achieve the criterion accuracy: 6, 3.7, and 3 sessions for Sets 1, 2, and 3, respectively, F(2, 5) = 0.13, p>