A primary goal of behavioral interventions is to reduce dangerous or inappropriate behavior and to generalize treatment effects across various settings. However, there is a lack of research evaluating generalization of treatment effects while individuals with functionally equivalent problem behavior interact with each other. For the current study,…

This study replicated and extended Wright (2006) and Whitehurst, Ironsmith, and Goldfein (1974) by examining whether preschool aged children would increase their use of passive grammatical voice rather than using the more age-appropriate active grammatical construction when the former was modeled by an adult. Results showed that 5 of the 6…

Previous studies have examined the maturation of learning and memory abilities during early stages of development. By comparison, much less is known about the ontogeny of learning and memory during later stages of development, including adolescence. In Experiment 1, we tested the ability of adolescent and adult rats to learn a Pavlovian negative…

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…

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.…

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…

Drugs, including alcohol, that are abused function as powerful reinforcers. Effective drug and alcohol addiction treatments decrease the reinforcing efficacy of the abused substance. Reinforcing efficacy arises from a variety of sources, documentation of which may aid in designing treatment and prevention interventions. Understanding the origin…

The aim of this study was to evaluate whether emergent conditional relations could be established with a go/no-go procedure using compound abstract stimuli. The procedure was conducted with 6 adult humans. During training, responses emitted in the presence of certain stimulus compounds (A1B1, A2B2, A3B3, B1C1, B2C2, and B3C3) were followed by…

The purpose of this experiment was to establish discriminative control of responding by an antecedent stimulus using differential punishment because the results of past studies on this topic have been mixed. Three adults with mental retardation who exhibited stereotypy not maintained by social consequences (i.e., automatic reinforcement)…

Two studies were done to examine aggressive behavior in humans. In Experiment One, adults working on a plunger pulling task could receive a 3.5 ma shock at 75% probability every two minutes. The shock was unrelated to their plunger pulling behavior. Subjects could press a toggle switch to deliver electric shock to the experimenter, who was in the…

Sensitivity to reinforcement contingencies was examined in six individuals with mental retardation using a concurrent operants procedure in the context of a computer game. Results included individual differences in sensitivity and differential sensitivity to rate and magnitude variation. Results suggest that comprehensive assessments of potential…

Five adult humans were tested for emergent conditional discriminations under rapid-responding contingencies. During four-comparison matching-to-sample baseline training (AB and AC), limited-hold contingencies for responding to samples and comparisons were gradually restricted to the shortest duration consistent with at least 95% accuracy and no…

The essentials of learned helplessness theory are described and supporting evidence surveyed. The explanation Seligman and Maier give for these findings is critically analyzed. A schedule-shift discrimination theory of learned helplessness effects is also discussed. (Author)

An experimental group of three institutionalized severely retarded adult males received binary tone feedback for alpha production while a control group (3) followed identical procedures without feedback. Analysis revealed significant difference between groups in alpha percentage increase over baseline, encouraging research on applications for…