The role of adult brain neurogenesis (generating new neurons) in learning and memory appears to be quite firmly established in spite of some criticism and lack of understanding of what the new neurons serve the brain for. Also, the few experiments showing that blocking adult neurogenesis causes learning deficits used irradiation and various drugs…

This project examined whether a history of reinforced relational responding would result in derived requesting skills in 3 adults with disabilities. Participants were first taught to request preferred items using pictures; they were then taught conditional discriminations between pictures and their dictated names and between dictated names and…

Five profoundly mentally retarded adolescents and adults were taught to respond to an auditory-visual complex stimulus. Later, the auditory component alone was presented, and three subjects did not respond. These subjects then received a fading program which successfully established auditory stimulus control with two subjects. (MSE)

Use of a tangible reinforcer plus social reinforcement was found to be more effective in training a 33-year-old male with profound mental retardation to brush his teeth than social reinforcement alone. Determination of true positive reinforcers and training staff members to carry out such treatment programs are also discussed. (Author/VW)