Concept Formation in a Child with an Intellectual Disability and Autistic Traits

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was to teach color concepts to a child (10 years old when this investigation was conducted) with severe mental retardation and autistic traits. When a match-to-sample procedure was used, the child did not learn to select color cards when the color name was presented orally. Naming the color cards was also not learned. Therefore, an intraverbal response to objects or a painted object card was taught. On some colors, when intraverbal responses were learned, both selecting color cards and naming color cards was possible without training. These results were discussed in relation to intraverbal responses.