Many researchers have evaluated how characteristics of feedback may influence trainee performance, but relatively little attention has been allocated to directly assessing trainee preference for feedback characteristics and its relation to performance. Thus, the primary purpose of this study was to use a within-subject experimental design to…

We examined correspondence between preference assessment outcome and within-session patterns of responding in one subject with autism. Responding maintained by a single highly preferred item resulted in a greater total number of responses, a slower decline in within-session response rates, and a greater proportion of short interresponse times…

Dependent variables in research on problem behavior typically are based on measures of response repetition, but these measures may be problematic when behavior poses high risk or when its occurrence terminates a session. We examined response latency as the index of behavior during assessment. In Experiment 1, we compared response rate and latency…

The quality of measurement systems used in almost all natural sciences other than behavior analysis is usually evaluated through calibration study rather than relying on interobserver agreement. We demonstrated some of the basic features of calibration using observer-measured rates of free-operant responding from 10 scripted 10-min calibration…

Four multiply handicapped students (aged 5-11) received skill instruction under four experimental conditions, involving differing teacher wait-times and intertrial interval durations. Student performance was superior under the long wait-time conditions irrespective of the length of the intertrial interval. (Author/JDD)

A study compared the effects of immediate self-correction, delayed self-correction, and no correction on the acquisition and maintenance of multiplication facts by a fourth-grade student with learning disabilities. Results indicate that both correct response rate and accuracy were higher when self-corrections were immediate rather than delayed or…

Fjellstedt and Sulzer-Azaroff (1973) used differential reinforcement of short latencies to decrease a child's latency to comply with instructions. We replicated this contingency with a young man diagnosed with Asperger syndrome across two tasks (question answering and math problem solving). We added a differential reinforcement contingency to…

Four students, aged 15-19, with moderate mental retardation learned to cash checks and use an automatic teller through either a decreasing prompt hierarchy or time-delay procedure. Both strategies led to acquisition of target tasks and were equally effective in producing performance maintenance; however, the decreasing prompt hierarchy was more…