The purpose of this research was to examine the conditions under which participants performed on a recall tests when participants could see and/or hear their own responses during training trials in comparison to conditions when they were not able to see and/or hear their own self stimulation behaviors.

Participants were assigned to one of four groups:

1. Taking Dictation Group
2. Copying Text Group
3. Echoic Group
4. Text to text Group

Based on group assignments, participants completed 20 trials (10 control, 10 experimental).

During both types of trials, participants were presented with a series of digits, and asked to record those digits. In control trials participants were able to engage in self stimulating components of the verbal behavior and during experimental trials, participants were not able to engage in those behaviors. Between trials and testing, participants engaged in a distractor task. Following the task, participants were ask to recall the series of digits they were presented with previously.

Subjects then completed an exit survey detailing strategies on how they recalled the digits.

Trial Overview

The results suggest that participants performed better on recall tests when they were able to engage in self stimulating components of verbal behavior.

This suggests that more research regarding self-stimulating components of verbal behavior is necessary. By gaining a better understanding of how these behaviors effect recall, updated learning strategies may be implemented, especially for individuals who may not be able to engage in self stimulatory behaviors.