title: Comparison of conditioning impairments in children with Down syndrome, autistic spectrum disorders and mental age-matched controls.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  This study investigated the relative ease of learning across four tasks suggested by an adaptation of Thomas's hierarchy of learning in children with Down syndrome, autism spectrum disorders and mental age-matched controls.
  
  
  METHODS
  Learning trials were carried out to investigate observational learning, instrumental learning, reversal learning and conditional discrimination.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The sample with autism spectrum disorders performed worse than the other two groups on the observational learning and conditional discrimination tasks, while the Down syndrome sample performed worse on the instrumental learning task.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These findings are discussed in terms of there implications for reward-based educational intervention programmes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Swansea University, Swansea, UK. p.reed@swansea.ac.uk
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Reed
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Staytom
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Stott
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Truzoli
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy; D032882:Comprehension; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004314:Down Syndrome / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy; D004519:Education, Special; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011340:Problem Solving; D011594:Psychometrics; D011930:Reaction Time; D012016:Reference Values; D012193:Reversal Learning; D014040:Token Economy; D016896:Treatment Outcome