The present study aims to understand children's behavior within classroom settings in terms of conditioning theories. It was designed based on grounded theory. Data were collected through participant observation and 98 children whose ages varied between 6 and 10 years were observed. Data were inductively analyzed. Findings indicated that…

This study aimed at investigating the similarities and differences between Vygotsky's perspectives on child language development with nativism and behaviorism. Proposing the idea of the Zone of Proximal Development, Vygotsky emphasized the role of collaborative interaction, scaffolding, and guided participation in language learning. Nativists, on…

This book contains a compilation of papers presented at the International Psychological Applications Conference and Trends (InPACT) 2018, organized by the World Institute for Advanced Research and Science (W.I.A.R.S.). Modern psychology offers a large range of scientific fields where it can be applied. The goal of understanding individuals and…

Arbitrarily applicable derived relational responding has been argued by relational frame theorists to be a form of operant behavior. The present study examined this idea with 4 female participants, ages 4 to 5 years old, who could not perform a series of problem-solving tasks involving arbitrary more than and less than relations. In a combined…

The purpose of the current article is to highlight the importance of operant techniques in developmental research. Although many researchers employ operant techniques within their individual fields of study, the pervasive nature of these techniques is not often acknowledged in the general literature. The present article describes the history of…

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…

Five adolescents with autism, 5 control participants, and 4 child controls received rewards for varying their sequences of responses while playing a computer game. In preceding and following phases, rewards were provided at approximately the same rate but were independent of variability. When reinforced, variability increased significantly in all…

A sequential training procedure combining operant and cumulative learning hierarchy principles was found effective in reducing the decrement in concept identification performance typically observed in older adults. (JMB)

The efficacy of teaching higher level cognitive skills to the trainable mentally retarded is questioned as research has yet to show that the skills learned can be generalized by this population to the classroom or other settings. (Author/PHR)

Two experiments examined whether associating an imitation task with an operant task affected 6-month-olds' memory for either task. Results indicated that infants successfully imitated a puppet's action for up to 2 weeks only if the associated operant task (pressing a lever to activate a miniature train) was retrieved first. Follow-up study…

This paper presents an integrative perspective on infant development (based on a consideration of developmental data) which focuses on the function of the smile. From the earliest spontaneous smiles of the newborn period to mature smiling and laughter, a central role was revealed for an excitation (tension)-relaxation process in producing smiles.…

A study investigating the discrimination abilities of two crib-bound, cerebral palsied, profoundly retarded females demonstrates the importance of individual differences among such children and suggests that discriminative responding may be demonstrated by at least some profoundly retarded children, particularly if distributed practice is employed…

Age-related changes in mental flexibility, in the form of task switching, were assessed in 292 children (58-156 months old). Task switching was examined with a new task for young children, the Switch Task for Children (STC). The STC consists of two easy, comparable games and does not require reading skills, which makes it suitable for children…

Currently, three theories of learning dominate classroom practice. First, B.F. Skinner's Theory of Operant Conditioning states that if behavior, including learning behavior, is reinforced, the probability of its being repeated increases strongly. Different types and schedules of reinforcement have been studied, by Skinner and others, and the…