Teaching with acoustical guidance involves auditory feedback (e.g., a click sound when a desired behavior occurs) as part of a multicomponent intervention known as TAGteach. TAGteach has been found to improve performance in sport, dance, surgical technique, and walking. We compared the efficacy and efficiency of the standard TAGteach…

Previous research has shown that praise is an effective reinforcer; however, few researchers have evaluated whether qualitative differences in praise affect responding. The purpose of the current study was to compare the effects of neutral, enthusiastic, and no praise on the rate of matching-to-sample acquisition during discrete-trial training…

Descriptive praise has been recommended widely as an important teaching tactic for children with autism, despite the absence of published supporting evidence. We compared the effects of descriptive and general praise on the acquisition and maintenance of intraverbal skills with 2 children with autism. The results showed slight advantages of…

Five children with autism participated in learning sessions involving trials of an acquisition task interspersed with trials of three maintenance tasks. Correct responses to acquisition tasks were continuously reinforced throughout all conditions; reinforcement for competent performance of maintenance tasks differed systematically. All children…

A study used a progressive delay procedure to teach self-control to six adults with mental retardation. At baseline, participants chose an immediate smaller reinforcer rather than a larger delayed reinforcer. Progressive increases in work requirements for gaining access to a larger reinforcer resulted in participants selecting larger delayed…

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…