Promoting the Emergence of Vocational Knowledge through Equivalence-Based Instruction with a Young Adult with Autism

We sought to evaluate the efficacy of an equivalence-based instructional program to teach vocational information to a young adult. This work has the potential to aid in workplace or vocational programming to teach declarative information about employment settings. We directly reinforced a subset of relations [Employee names (A) to job titles (B) (A–B) and a job titles (B) to a job responsibilities (C) (B–C)] and tested for the untrained emergence of other relations [Employee names (A) to job responsibilities (C) (A–C) and job responsibilities (C) to employee names (A) (C–A)]. In a multiple baseline across employment settings, mastery was observed across trained and derived relations with implications for vocational training.