We assessed whether novel praise statements could be used to (a) maintain and increase responses with existing reinforcement histories and (b) teach a previously untaught response among children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder across two experiments. During response-stimulus pairing, two responses resulted in preferred edibles but only one…

Creativity is typically defined as the generation of novel and useful ideas or artifacts. This generative capacity is crucial to everyday problem solving, technological innovation, scientific discovery, and the arts. A central concern of cognitive scientists is to understand the processes that underlie human creative thinking. We review evidence…

Often, eye-tracking researchers define areas of interest (AOIs) to analyze eye-tracking data. Although AOIs can be defined with systematic methods, researchers in organic chemistry education eye-tracking research often define them manually, as the semantic composition of the stimulus must be considered. Still, defining appropriate AOIs during data…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine the influence of caregivers' reports of family-related environmental confusion--which refers to the level of overstimulation in the family home environment due to auditory and nonauditory (i.e., visual and cognitive) noise--on the relation between child temperament and spoken language outcomes in…

Teaching tact and intraverbal responses based on function-feature-class to children with language delays can result in the emergence of untrained relational responses. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of compound stimuli in discriminated operants (i.e., different combinations of hear, see, touch, and taste) on the acquisition…

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and intellectual disability (ID) are heterogenous and prevalent conditions which may occur in isolation or as a co-morbidity. Psychiatric co-morbidity is common with limited treatment options. Preliminary research into electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for these conditions has been encouraging. Thus, further research…

Reading skills are widely recognized as fundamental abilities, crucial not only for academic success but also for participation in social activities and navigating interpersonal challenges. In the early formation of reading abilities, mastery of sight words is instrumental in effectively enhancing reading proficiency, particularly for individuals…

We show that learners generalized more broadly around the learned stimulus when they expected more variability between the learning set and the generalization set, as well as within the generalization set. Experiments 1 and 3 used a predictive learning task and demonstrated border perceptual generalization both when expected variability was…

Six experiments were conducted with graduate students to assess resurgence of compound (i.e., multi-step) academic responding under free operant procedures. Participants learned two different interobserver agreement (IOA) methods -- compound behaviors -- through instructional phases before beginning the experimental phases. Each experiment…

Self-referential information can reduce the congruency effect by acting as a signal to enhance cognitive control. However, it cannot be denied that self-referential information can attract and hold attention. To investigate this issue, the study used a revised Stroop task and recorded behavioral and electrophysiological data from thirty-three…

Math anxiety impedes people from working to their fullest potential (Hyman et al., 2015; Retanel et al., 2021) and impacts people of all ages, including both children and adults (Oh et al., 2022; SzczygieL, 2020). The influence parents' math anxiety has on children is also impactful on the children's own development of math anxiety or negative…

Deficits in communicating one's wants and needs can have significant and detrimental effects on quality of life. Particularly for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other related disabilities, manding is a pivotal skill that influences long-term prognosis. Mand training is complex and relies on several components to facilitate…

The autoclitic is among the least studied and most complex verbal operant named and described by Skinner. The descriptive autoclitic is one subtype, which among other functions can describe the strength of the response. If the clarity of the stimulus is one source of response strength for tacts, manipulating stimulus clarity should evoke different…

The inclusion of private events in the philosophy of our science is integral to avoid dualism and remain objective rather than making assumptions about an unseen mind. However, the inclusion of behaviors and stimuli which cannot be observed in an analysis poses obvious issues. One established method of studying covert behavior is to examine tasks…

This study investigated how emotional valence of a perceived emotional state impacted performance on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes task (RMET) in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing (TD) controls. Valence of items on the RMET, Adult (RMET-A) and Child (RMET-C) versions, was first classified in a survey of…