Using a deck of 60 Say All Fast a Minute Every Day Shuffled (SAFMEDS) cards, a learner established a fluent verbal repertoire related to the key terms of Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior. This learner was required to see the phrase printed on the front of the card and to say the term printed on the back. Regular timings were recorded…

Cognitive strategies are important tools for children with math difficulties (MD) in learning to solve word problems. The effectiveness of strategy training, however, depends on working memory capacity (WMC). Thus, children with MD but with relatively higher WMC are more likely to benefit from strategy training, whereas children with lower WMC may…

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…

Recently, it was proposed that the Simon effect would result not only from two interfering processes, as classical dual-route models assume, but from three processes. It was argued that priming from the spatial code to the nonspatial code might facilitate the identification of the nonspatial stimulus feature in congruent Simon trials. In the…

OpenCourseWare (OCW) has received increasing attention over the past few years in higher education. These courses provide appealing opportunities to view classes taught in well-established universities worldwide. The current study aims to examine how OCW lectures can serve as authentic learning materials to facilitate vocabulary acquisition for…

This study highlights the complex reading processes of two primary grade struggling readers. It provides a more complete picture of the readers' use of all parts of a text, verbal and visual, to construct meaning during reading. The oral reading data show that students used various linguistic strategies to read words, and the eye-tracking data…

This study sought to examine the effects of training mands on the emergence of tacts with the same response forms. Results indicated that training adjective sets as mands resulted in the emergence of adjective sets as tacts under modified, but not standard, antecedent conditions. The findings suggested that the apparent functional independence of…

Despite increasing interest in the interface between emotion and cognition, the role of emotion in cognitive tasks is unclear. According to one hypothesis, negative valence is more relevant for survival and is associated with a general slowdown of the processing of stimuli, due to a defense mechanism that freezes activity in the face of threat.…

The use of Skinner's Verbal Behavior (VB) classification system has been increasingly applied to learners with autism. In this interview, several of the best known behavior analysts were asked to answer some key questions regarding this practice, the state of research regarding the advantages of this approach, and the confusion that exists…

Our ability to identify even complex scenes in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) is astounding, but memory for such items seems lacking. Rather than pictures, we used streams of more than 200 verbal stimuli, rushing by on the screen at a rate of more than 12 items per second while participants had to detect infrequent names (Experiments 1…

The purpose of this series of experiments was to evaluate the effects of mixed mand-tact arrangements on the acquisition of mands and tacts in preschool-aged children. In Experiment 1, the effects of three training arrangements (mand-only training, tact-only training, and mand-tact training) were investigated with 3 typically developing children.…

We investigated the extent to which mands for information taught using structured teaching trials (i.e., verbal discriminative stimulus, verbal prompts, and programmed consequences) while contriving the establishing operations to young children with autism generalized to novel stimuli and settings. Three students with autism participated in this…

Although Skinner's "Verbal Behavior" (1957) was published over 50 years ago, behavior-analytic research on human language and cognition has been slow to develop. In recent years, a new behavioral approach to language known as relational frame theory (RFT) has generated considerable attention, research, and debate. The controversy surrounding RFT…

B. F. Skinner's first public exposition of his analysis of verbal behavior was the "Hefferline Notes" (1947a), a written summary of a course Skinner taught at Columbia University during the summer of 1947 just prior to his presentation of the William James Lectures at Harvard University in the fall. The Notes are significant because they display…

Previous studies have identified a number of effective teaching procedures to increase verbal behavior in individuals with developmental disabilities. However, few studies have evaluated modifications of treatment procedures when children fail to acquire communication skills. In the present investigation, a 4-year-old boy with autism failed to…