We report two experiments on the emission of questions to request the names of unfamiliar stimuli by preschoolers. In the first experiment, 19 preschoolers with and without disabilities served as participants. Experiment 1 was a descriptive analysis of whether or not the 19 participants asked questions about unfamiliar pictures and objects in…

We report 2 experiments that tested the effects of multiple exemplar instruction (MEI) across training sets on the emergence of productive autoclitic frames (suffixes) for 6 preschoolers with and without language-based disabilities. We implemented multiple exemplar tact instruction with subsets of stimuli whose "names" contained the suffix "-er"…

Naming is a verbal developmental capability and cusp that allows children to acquire listener and speaker functions without direct instruction (e.g., incidental learning of words for objects). We screened 19 typically developing 2- and 3-year-old children for the presence of Naming for 3-dimensional objects. All 9 3-year-olds had Naming, and 8 of…

This study sought to further investigate the effects of an observational intervention for two participants on the reinforcing property of pieces of string. Pre-observational intervention data showed that the neutral stimuli (strings) did not function to reinforce two participants' responding to a performance task or learning three new skills that…

The phenomenon identified as naming is a key stage of language function that is missing in many children with autism and other language delay diagnoses. We identified four children with autism, who, prior to the implementation of this experiment, did not have the naming repertoire (either speaker to listener or listener to speaker) and who had no…

The purpose of this study was to test the effects of playful physical contact as an establishing operation (EO) on correct academic responses for four-year-old preschool students with developmental disabilities who functioned at the pre-speaker and pre-listener levels of verbal behavior. Two males and one female served as participants who attended…

In 2 multiple baseline experiments, we tested stimulus-stimulus pairing effects on acquisition of conditioned reinforcement for observing and manipulating stimuli and stereotypy/passivity. In Experiment I we studied a 5 year-old male with autism and we collected data using continuous 5-sec whole interval recording in 5 min sessions in which the…

Two experiments were performed with five severely developmentally disabled individuals (13-26 years old) to test the relationship between toys as conditioned reinforcers and stereotypy. Findings suggested that conditioning reinforcers for play, such as toys, may result in a durable and possibly more cost effective procedure of dealing with…