Visual-visual nonidentity matching assessment: a worthwhile addition to the assessment of basic learning abilities test.

The Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities test (ABLA) is a useful tool for choosing appropriate training tasks for persons with developmental disabilities. This test assesses the ease or difficulty with which persons are able to learn six hierarchically positioned discrimination tasks. A visual-visual nonidentity matching prototype task was examined to assess its (a). relation to the ABLA hierarchy, (b). predictive validity, and (c). test-retest reliability. Results from 23 participants with developmental disabilities suggest that visual-visual nonidentity matching is a worthwhile addition to the ABLA test and is positioned in the ABLA hierarchy above Level 4 (visual-visual identity matching) and below Level 6 (auditory-visual discrimination). The prototype visual-visual nonidentity matching task also demonstrated high predictive validity and test-retest reliability.