Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who have limited spoken communication skills are commonly taught to mand by exchanging picture symbols. Competent manding via symbol exchange relies on conditional discrimination--that is, selecting the picture symbol that corresponds to the desired reinforcer. Picture Exchange Communication System…

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often emit errors during the establishment of conditional discriminations. These children may not respond to more traditional error-correction procedures, such as least-to-most prompting. In this study, we compared two other types of error-correction procedures, namely embedding an identity-matching…

Many individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) display stimulus overselectivity, wherein a subset of relevant components in a compound stimulus controls responding, which impairs discrimination learning. The original experimental research on stimulus overselectivity in ASD was conducted several decades ago; however, interventions for…

Many individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) display stimulus overselectivity, wherein a subset of relevant components in a compound stimulus controls responding, which impairs discrimination learning. The original experimental research on stimulus overselectivity in ASD was conducted several decades ago; however, interventions for…

Variation in baseline controlling relations is suggested as one of the factors determining variability in stimulus equivalence outcomes. This study used single- comparison trials attempting to control such controlling relations. Four children learned AB, BC, and CD conditional discriminations, with 2 samples and 2 comparison stimuli. In Condition…

This investigation evaluated the use of conditional discrimination (CD) instruction and multiple exemplar instruction (MEI) to establish derived relational responding in accordance with hierarchical frames with school aged children. The first experiment used a multiple probe design to evaluate the effectiveness of MEI to teach participants to…

A skill essential for successful inclusion in general education settings is the ability to learn by observing others. Research, however, has documented children with autism display significant deficits in the fundamental skills necessary for observational learning. This article outlines the skills essential for observational learning from an…

Past research has demonstrated a transformation of stimulus functions under similar conditions using gambling tasks and adults (e.g., Zlomke & Dixon, 2006), and the present study attempted to extend this research. Experimenters exposed 7 children (ages 7 to 10 years) to a simulated board game with concurrently available dice differing only by…

A major concern of this report was to compare the effect of three verbal reinforcement combinations (VRCs) on the rate at which children learn a simultaneous two-choice discrimination problem. The experiments were designed to test the following: (1) whether relative effectiveness of the VRCs was dependent upon task complexity or subject age; (2)…

One control group and eight experimental groups, each composed of 12 first grade children, participated in this experiment. It was designed to investigate the effects of frequency of reinforcement and repeated evaluation of stimuli on the conditioning of preferences. Each child participated in the experiment for seven consecutive school days. The…

The results of a group of studies, the objective of which was to clarify the conditions that account for the effectiveness of verbal approbation, are reported. Among the most significant findings were: (1) that the reinforcement properties of verbal approval are susceptible to distortion, misinterpretation or enhancement and must be applied in a…

Research was conducted on two selective attention systems in learning situations. The theoretical and experimental approaches are presented in a set of six papers. One paper considered directions in attention theory and five papers report experiments with pigeon and children subjects. The two attention systems are (1) coding response, which…

Children and adults were trained and tested on formation of novel simple discriminations and conditional stimulus relations. Subjects who formed these sets were trained and tested on formation of stimulus equivalence classes. A modest majority of children matched directly paired stimuli; a few matched indirectly paired stimuli. All normal adults…

Four groups of moderately retarded 7- to 13-year-old children (N =4 in each group) were trained to respond to a triangle with apex up (S+) and not to a triangle with apex down (S-), with and without errors. (Author)

Two normal and two mentally retarded children were trained to earn pennies by pressing a key according to a multiple variable-interval extinction schedule of reinforcement. Retarded children differed from normal children by producing more positive than negative discriminative stimuli. (Author/DB)