To ensure the quality of training, skills developed and maintained, and expected standards for behavior analysts, several systems have been put into place across the years. Of these systems, perhaps the most widespread was the development of the Behavior Analyst Certification Board in 1998. Once all requirements are met, the final determinative…

The objective of Experiment I was to determine whether establishing conditioned reinforcement for engaging in math for pre-kindergarten students was possible using the three conditioning procedures outlined in previous research for conditioning book stimuli. The purpose of Experiment II was to determine whether this change in preference for…

The experimenter conducted three experiments to compare incidental language acquisition of familiar and non-familiar stimuli, and asses the effects of specific pairing experiences on the emergence of bidirectional naming (BiN) for familiar and non-familiar stimuli. In Experiment I the experimenter assessed the numbers of accurate untaught listener…

Many individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) display stimulus overselectivity, wherein a subset of relevant components in a compound stimulus controls responding, which impairs discrimination learning. The original experimental research on stimulus overselectivity in ASD was conducted several decades ago; however, interventions for…

Naming refers to the incidental acquisition of word-object relations as listener and speaker without explicit reinforcement. To investigate possible sources of reinforcement for naming, we examined the effects of a procedure for conditioning reinforcement for observing responses on the emergence of naming in children who previously lacked it. The…

In the following paper, two experiments are reported based on the relation between adult approvals as conditioned reinforcers and the number of vocal verbal operants, specifically tacts, mands, wh questions, sequelics, and conversational units emitted by children diagnosed with developmental disabilities. In Experiment I, following an experimental…

Prior research has demonstrated the establishment of reinforcers for learning and maintenance with young children as a function of social learning where a peer and an adult experimenter were present. The presence of an adult experimenter was eliminated in the present study to test if the effect produced in the prior studies would occur with only…

Children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may play with limited objects or toys, making it difficult for teachers to identify reinforcers to use in teaching new skills. The goal of this study was to alter children's preferences from highly preferred toys to toys that were originally less preferred using an observational pairing procedure.…

Brief experimental analysis (BEA) is a useful tool for quickly evaluating intervention strategies for individuals with academic deficits and minor behavior problems. However, there is a lack of research investigating BEA for intervention strategies with individuals who emit severe problem behavior to avoid academic demands. For the current study,…

This study was undertaken to replicate prior research in which a brief counter-conditioning and confidence training program was found to reduce anxiety and raise test scores. First-semester college students were screened with the Westside Test Anxiety Scale, and the 25 identified as having high or moderately-high anxiety were randomly divided…

Many early intervention curricular manuals recommend teaching auditory-visual conditional discriminations (i.e., receptive labeling) using the simple-conditional method in which component simple discriminations are taught in isolation and in the presence of a distracter stimulus before the learner is required to respond conditionally. Some have…

We tested the effects of an observational intervention (Greer & Singer-Dudek, 2008) on establishing children's books as conditioned reinforcers using a delayed multiple baseline design. Three preschool students with mild language and developmental delays served as the participants. Prior to the intervention, books did not function as reinforcers…

Excessively devaluing delayed reinforcers co-occurs with a wide variety of clinical conditions such as drug dependence, obesity, and excessive gambling. If excessive delay discounting is a trans-disease process that underlies the choice behavior leading to these and other negative health conditions, efforts to change an individual's discount rate…

It is often argued that exposure-based treatments for anxiety disorders are only effective if the exposures are presented continuously until a marked decrement in anxiety is achieved (e.g. Foa & Kozak, 1986). However, the data supporting this conclusion is limited. This study compared two treatments for public speaking anxiety: one requiring…

We used a delayed non-concurrent pre- and post-intervention probe design to test the effects of a voice conditioning protocol (VCP) with 3 preschoolers with autism on (a) rate of acquisition of listener curricular objectives, (b) observing voices and the presence of adults across 3 settings, (c) selecting to listen to adults tell stories in free…