Adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have persistent difficulty developing and generalizing social communication and interaction skills. Emerging research has demonstrated that people with ASD have benefited from strategies that embed multiple-exemplar training (MET) to increase generalization of social skills.…

Existing approaches for training paraeducators rely heavily on intensive one-to-one coaching and may not be feasible in practice. In this study, we test a tiered training model in which all paraeducators first received group training, and then coaching was provided only for the subset who did not meet performance criteria after group training.…

Language is one of the hallmarks of intelligence, demanding explanation in a theory of human cognition. However, language presents unique practical challenges for quantitative empirical research, making many linguistic theories difficult to test at naturalistic scales. Artificial neural network language models (LMs) provide a new tool for studying…

Learning to read English requires learning the complex statistical dependencies between orthography and phonology. Previous research has focused on how these statistics are learned in neural network models provided with as much training as needed. Children, however, are expected to acquire this knowledge in a few years of school with only limited…

It is often necessary for the behavior analyst practitioner to work across a variety of settings, including home, school, and community, in which it is common practice for those practitioners to provide training to caregivers and direct-care staff, who may have limited knowledge and experience within the field of applied behavior analysis. A…

The article reports on the first phase of a large-scale qualitative research project that explored the perceptions of training practitioners on how they understood the process by which we carry our knowledge and skill across different contexts. Clearly, this is a process of transition, where it is the individual who moves across the contexts and…

Little research has been conducted on teaching children with autism spectrum disorders to be compliant with dental procedures. This study evaluated a behavioral package to train children with autism spectrum disorders to be compliant with an 8 component oral assessment. After a dental hygienist performed an assessment pretest, noncompliance on…

Results of two studies using the Esper paradigm to determine development of rule application and discovery are reported. Subjects learned and generalized when rule and structure were provided, but there was little evidence of rule discovery. Manipulations of memory and attention facilitated learning, but only attention facilitated rule discovery.…

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a transfer-of-training model and a method for applying it. A literature review investigated the theory and practice of transfer of training. In the first phase of the research, a transfer-of-training model was developed using the principles of general systems theory, the various steps of a…