A recent intervention, the Step it UP! game (Galbraith & Normand, 2017), consists of an interdependent group contingency to increase student physical activity. In addition, previous research demonstrated that adult interaction may reinforce physical activity (Larson et al., 2014). We extended research on the Step it UP! game by comparing the…

Research has identified a variety of effective approaches for responding to errors during discrete-trial training. In one commonly used method, the therapist delivers a prompt contingent on the occurrence of an incorrect response and then re-presents the trial so that the learner has an opportunity to perform the correct response independently.…

Although massed-trial instruction, distributed-trial instruction, and task interspersal have been shown to be effective methods of teaching skills to children with autism spectrum disorders, they have not been directly compared. In the current study, we taught 6 children to tact shapes of countries using these methods to determine which would…

We used a multiple baseline design across skills to evaluate the effects of a program to teach a classroom of children to respond to their name and a group call (i.e., precursors) as well as to peer mediate these precursors to promote compliance with a variety of multistep instructions. Teachers taught these skills via classwide behavior skills…

Previous research has suggested that the topography of instructions (general vs. specific) may influence the likelihood that young children comply with instructions. The purpose of the current study was to compare the rates of task completion of a young man diagnosed with Asperger syndrome when provided with general and specific instructions…

The present study evaluated a new 30-day Web-based contingency management program for smoking abstinence with 4 daily-smoking adolescents. Participants made 3 daily video recordings of themselves giving breath carbon monoxide (CO) samples at home that were sent electronically to study personnel. Using a reversal design, participants could earn…

Web-based software was used to deliver and record the effects of programmed instruction that progressively added formal prompts until attempts were successful, programmed instruction with one attempt, and prose tutorials. Error-contingent progressive prompting took significantly longer than programmed instruction and prose. Both forms of…

Prompting, positive and negative reinforcement, and a gradually extended reinforcement schedule were used with three autistic clients (two six-year-olds and one adolescent) to teach them to maintain on-task behaviors without constant supervision. Results indicated that appropriate behavior could be successfully maintained with only infrequent and…

A study of 4 youths (ages 11-18) with autism examined the effectiveness of teaching appropriate affective behavioral responses. Participants were described by teachers as having flat and inappropriate affect. Treatment consisted of modeling, prompting, and reinforcement. The combination of an error-correction procedure and contingent delivery of…