Research has demonstrated the efficacy and effectiveness of using high preferred stimuli as reinforcers to change individual behavior. However, these high preferred reinforcers are not always readily available or it may not be in the individual's best interest to use them (i.e., high calorie edibles). Previous research has demonstrated that…

This article extends Dr. Bob Remington's call for collaborations between those supporting behavioral approaches and those supporting more natural developmental approaches to beginning communication intervention. This article expands areas previously discussed by Dr. Remington. Topics that are addressed include pivotal behaviors that may facilitate…

Cognitive flexibility refers to various processes which enable behaviors to be modified on the basis of a change in the contingencies between stimuli or responses and their associated outcomes. Reversal learning is a form of cognitive flexibility which measures the ability to adjust responding based on a switch in the stimulus--outcome…

The Good Behavior Game (GBG) is an effective intervention to reduce disruptive behavior. The GBG typically involves immediate stimulus presentation (e.g., delivery of a token) following disruptions; however, experimenters have also removed tokens contingent upon disruptions. In the present study, we compared the effects of the GBG-stimulus…

Within the domain of associative learning, there is substantial evidence that people (and other animals) select among environmental cues on the basis of their reinforcement history. Specifically, people preferentially attend to, and learn about, cueing stimuli that have previously predicted events of consequence (a predictiveness bias). By…

Research on stimulus-stimulus pairing to induce novel vocalizations in nonverbal children has typically employed response-independent pairing (RIP) procedures to condition speech sounds as reinforcers. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effects of a response-contingent pairing (RCP) procedure on the vocalizations of three…

Selective mutism is a relatively uncommon, yet significantly impairing anxiety disorder that causes difficulties in young children when communicating in social situations (such as school) even though they speak normally when they are comfortable (such as at home). Early childhood educators play a unique role in helping to identify selective…

In choice reaction time (RT) tasks, performance is often influenced by the presence of nominally irrelevant stimuli, referred to as distractors. Recent research provided evidence that distractor processing can be adjusted to the utility of the distractors: Distractors predictive of the upcoming target/response were more attended to and also…

Students may engage in behavior during instruction that impacts the acquisition of skills. Intervening on student behavior using group contingencies may be more efficacious than other intervention methods. Directly programming for generalization of treatment effects may increase the durability of behavior change and further increase the efficacy…

Although massed-trial instruction, distributed-trial instruction, and task interspersal have been shown to be effective methods of teaching skills to children with autism spectrum disorders, they have not been directly compared. In the current study, we taught 6 children to tact shapes of countries using these methods to determine which would…

Three experiments evaluated whether the apparent reflexivity effect reported by Sweeney and Urcuioli (2010) for pigeons might, in fact, be transitivity. In Experiment 1, pigeons learned symmetrically reinforced hue-form (A-B) and form-hue (B-A) successive matching. Those also trained on form-form (B-B) matching responded more to hue comparisons…

Sleep problems are a common occurrence among children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). In addition to the adverse effects that sleep problems present for children's neurodevelopment, learning, and daytime behaviors, these sleep problems also present significant challenges for the entire family. This article outlines the results of a…

Brief experimental analysis (BEA) is a useful tool for quickly evaluating intervention strategies for individuals with academic deficits and minor behavior problems. However, there is a lack of research investigating BEA for intervention strategies with individuals who emit severe problem behavior to avoid academic demands. For the current study,…

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the use of a treatment package comprised of a social story, discrimination training, and differential reinforcement with response cost on the vocal stereotypy of one preschooler diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. The study took place in a preschool classroom of a public school and was implemented…

This study examined how the amount of effort required to produce a reinforcer influenced subsequent preference for, and strength of, that reinforcer in 7 individuals with intellectual disabilities. Preference assessments identified four moderately preferred stimuli for each participant, and progressive-ratio (PR) analyses indexed reinforcer…