School-wide behavior problems can vary significantly from structured to unstructured settings. Often problem behaviors can spike during unstructured times such as lunch and recess and the use of Tier 1 positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS) can be used to reduce student behavior problems in these settings. Using a token economy as an…

Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who engage in stereotypy may also emit a prior, temporally contiguous, high-risk response to access stereotypic behaviors. For example, the participant in this study who was diagnosed with ASD engaged in a chained response that included elopement, often in unsafe locations, to access light…

Researchers have been drawing attention to the power of collegial interaction for teacher professional development for some time. Yet collegial interaction should not be taken as a perfect solution absent of any drawbacks. In this study, the author examines teachers' collective construction of students to examine whether counter-productive…

Our research focuses on the creation and reinforcement of overgeneralized and inaccurate depictions of language behavior on the Internet. Misrepresentation of language behavior spreads easily by exposure to unchallenged depictions. We posit that such stereotypes have already influenced our students, consumers of the Internet, by introducing,…

Background: Behavioral support may be effective in increasing physical activity (PA) in school settings. However, there are no data collection systems to concurrently record PA and behavioral support. This paper describes the development and validation of the System for Observing Behavioral Ecology for Youth in Schools (SOBEYS)--an instrument used…

Findings from a randomized controlled design study of an ability-based versus needs-based approach to response-contingent learning among children with significant developmental delays and disabilities who did not use instrumental behavior to produce reinforcing consequences are reported. The ability-based intervention and needs-based intervention…

Sign- and goal-tracking are differentially associated with drug abuse-related behavior. Recently, it has been hypothesized that sign- and goal-tracking behavior are mediated by different neurobehavioral valuation systems, including differential incentive salience attribution. Herein, we used different conditioned stimuli to preferentially elicit…

Behavioral flexibility is vital for survival in an environment of changing contingencies. The nucleus accumbens may play an important role in behavioral flexibility, representing learned stimulus-reward associations in neural activity during response selection and learning from results. To investigate the role of nucleus accumbens neural activity…

We investigated changes in bias (preference for one response alternative) in signal detection when relative reinforcer frequency for correct responses varied across sessions. In Experiment 1, 4 rats responded in a two-stimulus, two-response identification procedure employing temporal stimuli (short vs. long houselight presentations). Relative…

We employ a behavioral-economic equation put forward by Hursh and Silberberg (2008) to explain human consumption behavior among substitutable food brands, applying a consumer-choice model--the behavioral perspective model (BPM; Foxall, 1990/2004, 2005). In this study, we apply the behavioral-economic equation to human economic consumption data. We…

The present study investigated the effect of the presence of the experimenter on behavioral sensitivity to contingency change. In history training, college students were exposed to differential reinforcement of low rate (DRL) and fixed-ratio (FR) schedules, and in testing, to a fixed-interval (FI) schedule. For the control group, instructions were…

Schedules of reinforcement typically produce reliable patterns of behaviour, and one factor that can cause deviations from these normally reliable patterns is schizotypy. Low scorers on the unusual experiences subscale of the Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences performed as expected on a yoked random-ratio (RR), random-interval…

Of the diagnostic features of autism, relatively little research has been devoted to restricted and repetitive behavior, particularly topographically complex forms of restricted and repetitive behavior such as rigidity in routines or compulsive-like behavior (e.g., arranging objects in patterns or rows). Like vocal or motor stereotypy,…

Background: Changes in reward processing are thought to be involved in the etiology of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as well as other developmental disorders. In addition, different forms of therapy for ADHD rely on reinforcement principles. As such, improved understanding of reward processing in ADHD could eventually lead to…

The authors examined the effects of randomized and delayed credit on the percentage of college students participating at four pre-defined levels on each class discussion day: non-participation, credit-level participation, frequent participation, and dominant participation. Although the same amount of participation credit was available to students…