Rules can enable individuals to effectively bypass some of the unavoidable outcomes associated with delayed reinforcers. This exploratory study analyzes how varying levels of rule explicitness affect instructional control under immediate and delayed contingencies. Through four studies, the impact of rule explicitness on verbal antecedent control…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often display impairments in communication, such as limited echoic behavior, few vocal-verbal responses, and a lack of functional communication. One potential way to foster the acquisition of vocal responses in individuals with disabilities is by conditioning vocalizations as reinforcers. Conditioning…

A learning situation in which the principal content of what is to be learned is not given but is independently discovered by the learner is often considered "discovery learning." Recently, learning scientists have been able to make explicit some of the conditions under which such independent discovery is likely to occur (Andronis, 1983; Epstein,…