Accumulating studies are documenting specific motivational variables that, when combined into a naturalistic teaching paradigm, can positively influence the effectiveness of interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The purpose of this study was to compare two applied behavior analysis (ABA) intervention procedures, a…

The effects of noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) schedules on responding were assessed across two parameters: presence of signal and schedule density. Results indicated that signaled NCR schedules were correlated with greater overall reductions in responding and quicker reductions relative to NCR schedules without a signal. The clinical…

Effects of a Lag 1 reinforcement schedule on appropriate and varied responding to the social question, "What do you like to do?" and effects of the proportion of preferred stimuli present during training on the amount of varied responding in each session were investigated with students with autism. An ABAB reversal design and a multielement design…

Effects of sensory extinction procedures on nontargeted self-stimulatory behaviors of two autistic boys (7 and 12 years old) were assessed. In Experiment 1 application of sensory extinction for target behaviors resulted in decreased topographically similar behavior, but no change in dissimilar behavior. In Experiment 2, suppression also occurred…