The purpose of the current paper is to describe the impact of applied behaviour analysis on language treatment for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) diagnoses. Specifically, this paper will describe Skinner's theory of verbal behaviour and its contributions to evidence-based treatments for communication deficits among individuals with…

From leading authorities, this state-of-the-art manual presents the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM), the first comprehensive, empirically tested intervention specifically designed for toddlers and preschoolers with autism. Supported by the principles of developmental psychology and applied behavior analysis, ESDM's intensive teaching interventions…

This document contains a literature review and discussion focusing on general tactical issues involved in research on modeling and verbal behavior. Five basic issues were identified: (1) It is necessary to distinguish between acquisition of new responses and performance of those already in the repertory. (2) The relationships between the modeled…

The degree to which children aged 2 and under imitated a peer's novel uses of a material was examined. After being trained to emit "correct use responses" with the materials a child was placed in a peer group with instructions to show other children what he had learned. Results are discussed. (SE)

Children who observed a very generous adult model sharing, later shared more than those who observed a very stingy model. The effects of vicarious reinforcement on the amount shared, delivered by either the experimenter or the model alone, were also demonstrated. (Authors)

All forms of play are transformations of four basic modes by which people know the world: copying, analysis, prediction, and synthesis. Transformation involves foregoing the usual outcomes of adapted intelligence for the sake of voluntary control of one's own behavior in games, and for the excitement of novel affective, cognitive and behavioral…

Co-observer evaluations affected the imitation of older children when they were alone, but not that of younger children. (Author)

Forty-eight preschool children were run under a classical conditioning paradigm in which some neutral stimuli were repeatedly associated with an adult matching the behavior of the subject, and other neutral stimuli were associated with the same adult mismatching the behavior of the subject. Preference for the stimuli associated with being matched…

The purpose of this study was to determine the differential effects of imitating versus not imitating children on their subsequent tendency to imitate a model. Subjects were 54 kindergarten children. (MS)

The theory of social comparison postulates that the tendency to compare one's performance to others' will decrease as a function of the discrepancy between the quality of one's own performance and that of the comparison person. (Author/MB)

Results indicated that children exposed to the aggressive program engaged in longer attacks against an ostensible child victim than subjects exposed to the nonaggressive program. (Authors)

An experimental analysis of imitation was conducted to examine the influence of response topography on generalization of imitation across three response types with four children (ages two to four) with autism. The study found that imitation generalized from reinforced training models to nonreinforced probe models within a response type but did not…