Reward has been shown to change behavior as a result of incentive learning (by motivating the individual to increase their effort) and instrumental learning (by increasing the frequency of a particular behavior). However, Palminteri et al. (2011) demonstrated that reward can also improve the incidental learning of a motor skill even when…

The techniques of fading response prompts with severely handicapped students are described, comparative studies related to the methods are reviewed, and a framework for future research is proposed. Among methods considered are decreasing assistance, time delay, and graduated guidance. (CL)

This study investigated the generalization of parenting skills to the home from PCIT delivered in a community mental health setting with four urban, low-income, single mothers at risk for child maltreatment. Using a multiple baseline design and direct observation in the home, the research examined changes in positive attention skills (praise,…

Research is reviewed that employs delay procedures with the severely handicapped as a means of shifting stimulus control. The parameters of delay procedures are delineated, including prerequisite student and teacher considerations, types of responses, levels of delay, single versus blocked trials, and basic delay methodology. (Author)

Two children (ages 10 and 12) with severe mental retardation were trained to make the same response when presented with 2 initially unrelated stimuli and then trained to make a new response when presented with 1 of those stimuli. Children were then assessed on their response to the second stimulus. Results of the tests for the emergent…

Kindergarten and first grade children were trained to choose the middle-sized stimulus in either a single stimulus set or in each of two nonoverlapping stimulus sets. Findings were reported in terms of the assumption that cognitive processes are important in the intermediate-sized transposition paradigm. (Author/DB)

Curriculum development would be greatly aided if it could be demonstrated that certain instructional techniques have a generalization effect that encompasses several content settings. The evidence that transfer does occur within the learning process is strong enough to warrant this study into the generalization of science instruction. It was…

Two experiments were done with a 16-year-old severely retarded male, involving the training of generalized instruction-following responses to preposition-noun combinations. (Author/DLS)

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first demonstration that from observation alone, unaided by other means of conveying information, a concept can be retained and generalized to novel stimuli after a substantial elapse of time. (Authors/MB)

Studies the ability of college women to generalize resistance to stress when learning lists of nonsense syllables. Subjects trained under one type of stress learned more easily under a second type of stress than did subjects trained under nonstressful conditions. Table, graph, and bibliography. (RW)

Shows that pretraining affects cue selection and produces integration of the stimulus without affecting paired associate learning. Suggests that these findings might help to improve selection strategies of younger children in paired associate learning. (RL)

Contextualized instruction (also referenced as anchor instruction) is teaching a skill within a specific or functional context known as a target setting. The purpose of this approach is to teach transfer or generalization of a skill in order to increase the likelihood that what is taught in the training or classroom setting will be used in future…

This study investigated the spontaneous use of verbal mediators in discrimination learning, the transfer of mediators to a free recall task, and the effects of a pretraining task on performance. The discrimination tasks required nursery school children (80) to: (1) sort three instances each of two different concepts in a conceptually consistent…