A FURTHER EVALUATION OF PICTURE PROMPTS DURING AUDITORY-VISUAL CONDITIONAL DISCRIMINATION TRAINING CHARLOTTE L. CARP,SEAN P. PETERSON,AMBER J. ARKEL, AND ANNA I. PETURSDOTTIR TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY AND EINAR T. INGVARSSON UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS AND CHILD STUDY CENTER, FORT WORTH This study was a systematic replication and extension of Fisher, Kodak, and Moore (2007), in which a picture prompt embedded into a least-to-most prompting sequence facilitated acquisition of auditory-visual conditional discriminations. Participants were 4 children who had been diagnosed with autism; 2 had limited prior receptive skills, and 2 had more advanced receptive skills. We used a balanced design to compare the effects of picture prompts, pointing prompts, and either trial-and-error learning or a no-reinforcement condition. In addition, we assessed the emergence of vocal tacts for the 2 participants who had prior tact repertoires. Picture prompts enhanced acquisition for all participants, but there were no differential effects on tact emergence. The results support a generality of the effect reported by Fisher et al. and suggest that a variety of learners may benefit from the incorporation of picture prompts into auditory-visual conditional discrimination training. Key words: autism, children, conditional discrimination, listener behavior, prompts Instructional programs that aim to establish appropriate nonverbal responding to spoken words or sentences are often referred to as listener training (e.g., Greer & Ross, 2008; Sundberg & Partington, 1998) or receptive language training (e.g., Lovaas, 2003; Maurice, Green, & Luce, 1996). These programs address important language skill components that typically developing children appear to acquire effortlessly via interactions with caregivers (Hart & Risley, 1975), but must often be taught explicitly to children who have developmental delays. Many listener skills involve auditory-visual conditional discriminations. For example, to respond appropriately to the instructions ‘‘pick up the ball’’ and ‘‘pick up the car,’’ the auditory stimuli ‘‘ball’’ and ‘‘car’’ must each result in the learner picking up the correct object from among all the objects that he or she sees. Thus, reinforcement for selecting a particular visual stimulus is conditional on the presence of a particular auditory stimulus. The manner in which these discriminations are commonly taught (e.g., Greer & Ross, 2008; Lovaas, 2003; Maurice et al., 1996; Sundberg & Partington, 1998) may be described as match- to-sample training, in which the teacher’s spoken instruction serves as a sample stimulus, and the comparison stimuli consist of objects or pictures that are presented to the learner in an array. From the point of view of the learner who has not yet acquired the relevant discrim- inations, the matching task is arbitrary in the This research was supported in part by an under- graduate research grant awarded to Amber J. Arkel by the TCU Science and Engineering Research Center. We thank Mike Botkin, Tayla Cox, Marilyse Payette, and Tori VerPloeg for assisting with data collection, and we thank the Child Study Center in Fort Worth for their invaluable assistance and support of this research. Sean P. Peterson is now at the Munroe-Meyer Institute, University of Nebraska Medical Center. Amber J. Arkel is now at the University of the Rockies. Address correspondence to Anna Ingeborg Peturs- dottir, Department of Psychology, Texas Christian University, Box 298920, Fort Worth, Texas 76129 (e-mail: a.petursdottir@tcu.edu). doi: 10.1901/jaba.2012.45-737 737 JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS NUMBER 4(WINTER 2012) 2012, 45, 737–751