Members (behaviors) of a response class are equivalent in that they produce the same functional reinforcer. Oftentimes, some members of a response class occur at higher rates than others. This can be problematic when the members that occur at high rates are socially inappropriate (e.g., self-injury, aggression, or disruption). The participant in…

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…

An important aspect of goal-directed action selection is differentiating between actions that are more or less likely to be reinforced. With repeated performance or psychostimulant exposure, however, actions can assume stimulus-elicited--or "habitual"--qualities that are resistant to change. We show that selective knockdown of prelimbic…

This review examined the effectiveness of peer-mediated pivotal response treatment (PM-PRT) to increase social-communication skills for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A systematic review was conducted of all published studies examining PM-PRT in school-aged children with ASD, based on an established rubric. Five PM-PRT studies…

We examined whether "discrete trial training" (DTT) could be used to identify learning impairments in mathematical reasoning in boys with fragile X syndrome (FXS). Boys with FXS, aged 10-23 years, and age and IQ-matched controls, were trained to match fractions to pie-charts and pie-charts to decimals either on a computer or with a…

By recording the feedback-related negativity (FRN) in response to gains and losses, we investigated the contribution of outcome monitoring mechanisms to age-associated differences in probabilistic reinforcement learning. Specifically, we assessed the difference of the monitoring reactions to gains and losses to investigate the monitoring of…

The present study investigated the effects of contingency-specifying rules and a token economy to decrease the latency to comply with academic instructions by a 16-year-old girl with acquired brain injury. Results showed that treatment was successful in reducing academic response latencies. These results replicate previous research in which…

Fjellstedt and Sulzer-Azaroff (1973) used differential reinforcement of short latencies to decrease a child's latency to comply with instructions. We replicated this contingency with a young man diagnosed with Asperger syndrome across two tasks (question answering and math problem solving). We added a differential reinforcement contingency to…

Results clearly demonstrated that the children in this investigation made significantly more and faster responses when the reinforcer presentation was varied as opposed to constant. (Author/DB)

Examines the development of reciprocal cooperation in dyads by allowing one subject at a time to be dependent upon a partner and then reversing this condition periodically. Subjects were 10 special education unit students who ranged in age from 10 to 16 years. (MP)

This study used time-out (TO) as the primary therapeutic intervention with a 13-year-old highly aggressive male in a public school setting. TO was used over a 10-week period with extinction of the specified behaviors occurring after the seventh week. During an 8-week follow-up only three instances of the aggressive behaviors were observed. (Author)

Observed the accuracy of self-recording of on-task behavior by five special education students. Found high accuracy when reinforcers were used, but accuracy declined sharply in the self-reinforcement condition after repeated exposure. (FMW)

Effects of extinction and negative reinforcement on latency of responses (including aggression and self-injurious behavior) following activity requests to an adolescent girl with mental retardation and autism were evaluated. Results showed that latencies occurred in a predictable order. The response class was expanded to include an appropriate…

A continuous reinforcement, delayed classical eyelid-conditioning paradigm in combination with the peripheral vasomotor response of digital vasoconstriction was employed to examine the hypothesized attention deficit for 10 15-year-old educable mentally retarded and same-age nonretarded Ss. (Author/MC)