StartMatching: Behavioral Technology for Teaching Matching Skills
Richard Serna

R43-44 HD38197 (1999-2003) R44 HD38197

This SBIR project develops and studies a computer-based product intended primarily for teaching children with mental retardation, autism, and other intellectual disabilities. The product addresses a pivotal skill -- generalized identity matching to sample -- which is a target of many current programs for teaching this population (and also for teaching young typically developing children). In identity matching, students are presented with an array of two- or three-dimensional stimuli and required to select the item that physically matches (i.e., is identical to) a sample; hence the name "matching to sample." The project has adapted well developed, extensively researched laboratory methods and software for use by parents, teachers, and other helping professionals. There is a manifest need for the product. Identity matching provides a foundation for assessing and teaching a large variety of basic discrimination, reading readiness, and symbolic communication skills. However, many children with intellectual disabilities do not learn identity matching readily (or at all) via conventional instructional methods. Over the past decade, a substantial investment of NIH research funding has led to the development of methods that can establish generalized identity matching in virtually all children; this project will make those methods readily accessible to the professionals, parents, and children who would benefit.