Abrupt discontinuation of functional communication training can cause resurgence of challenging behavior. Teaching multiple alternative responses in sequence ("serial training") may reduce resurgence, relative to teaching a single alternative. However, previous evaluations of serial training included a different number of response…

This study investigated the effects of tact prompts on the acquisition and retention of divergent intraverbal responding to categorical questions involving conditional discriminations. A 6-year-old boy with autism participated in the study. A multiple probe design across behaviors was used. A tact-prompt procedure was implemented. The results…

Five reinforcing activities were presented to and interrupted for two participants with autism. An errorless teaching procedure was then introduced with two similar activities prompting the participants to request information saying "How?" in order to resume the activity. The dependent variable included both the cumulative number of…

While knowing what to expect is important, it is equally important to know when to expect it and to respond accordingly. This is apparent even in simple Pavlovian training situations in which animals learn to respond more strongly closer to reward delivery. Here we report that the nucleus accumbens core, an area well-positioned to represent…

Four young adults with moderate mental retardation were taught to include "please" as part of requests, and four environmental stimuli present during training were assessed. Results indicated that presence of a single stimulus or pair of stimuli increased the probability of the "please" response, whereas presence of other…

Increase in probe accuracy following concurrent training was consistently greater than following serial training. (Authors)