The loss of behavioral flexibility is common across a number of neuropsychiatric illnesses. This may be in part due to the loss of the ability to detect or use changes in action-outcome contingencies to guide behavior. There is growing evidence that the ventral hippocampus plays a critical role in the regulation of flexible behavior and…

Findings from a randomized controlled design study of an ability-based versus needs-based approach to response-contingent learning among children with significant developmental delays and disabilities who did not use instrumental behavior to produce reinforcing consequences are reported. The ability-based intervention and needs-based intervention…

The present study investigated the effect of the presence of the experimenter on behavioral sensitivity to contingency change. In history training, college students were exposed to differential reinforcement of low rate (DRL) and fixed-ratio (FR) schedules, and in testing, to a fixed-interval (FI) schedule. For the control group, instructions were…

This study was designed to investigate response-class phenomena and the possibility of indirect contingency control. A 3 1/2-year-old male was the subject for the study. (BD)

Findings from two studies of 42 children with profound developmental delays (26 males and 15 females) using systematic and intense response-contingent learning opportunities interventions are reported. Response-contingent learning games were used to promote the participants' use of behavior that either produced environmental consequences or…

College students were instigated by a confederate and then interacted with that same person on a reaction time completion task. The confederate informed half of the treatment subjects of the response strategy he intended to adopt. The other half received an irrelevant message. Subjects in both message conditions then competed against the…

Assessed main and collateral effects of the assessment and treatment of attention-maintained self-injury, with regard to four categories of behavior: self-injury, a novel mand, pre-existing prosocial responses, and other aberrant responses. Results suggest that self-injury, prosocial responses, and other abberant behaviors are within the same…

The effects of different schedules of noncontingent reward on subsequent learning in children were investigated. In the first phase of the experiment subjects performed a block-design matching task and received one of three schedules of noncontingent reward, i.e., continuous reward (Group CRF), random reward on 50% of the trials (Group 50R), or no…

The article suggests that retarded behavior is maintained by certain events in the environment and their relationship to an individual's behavior. Maintenance of these behaviors is attributed to positive reinforcement, avoidance behavior, and contingency schedules. Several examples of the maintenance effects of each of these paradigms are given.…

Two studies with four adolescents with behavior disorders investigated the relationship between antecedent events and aggressive behavior in school and home settings. The use of videotape recordings and behavioral rehearsal of alternative responses resulted in decreases in the frequency of aggressive behavior and associated antecedent events. (DB)

Five experiments were conducted to determine whether properties inherent in some training procedures may subtly influence the adaptability of skilled performance of complex tasks. The first two experiments assessed the insensitivity of low-rate performances. Examined in the third experiment was the issue of whether instructions that focus…