Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who have limited spoken communication skills are commonly taught to mand by exchanging picture symbols. Competent manding via symbol exchange relies on conditional discrimination--that is, selecting the picture symbol that corresponds to the desired reinforcer. Picture Exchange Communication System…

Most verbal behavior curricula for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) focus on teaching multiple mands during the early stages of training (e.g., picture exchange communication system; Bondy & Frost, 1994). However, few, if any, of those curricula train children with ASD to differentially mand only for reinforcers that are reasonable…

This study investigated the effects of tact prompts on the acquisition and retention of divergent intraverbal responding to categorical questions involving conditional discriminations. A 6-year-old boy with autism participated in the study. A multiple probe design across behaviors was used. A tact-prompt procedure was implemented. The results…

Using a conditional discrimination procedure, pigeons were exposed to a nonverbal analogue of qualifying autoclitics such as "definitely" and "maybe." It has been suggested that these autoclitics are similar to tacts except that they are under the control of private discriminative stimuli. Instead of the conventional assumption…

A major concern of this report was to compare the effect of three verbal reinforcement combinations (VRCs) on the rate at which children learn a simultaneous two-choice discrimination problem. The experiments were designed to test the following: (1) whether relative effectiveness of the VRCs was dependent upon task complexity or subject age; (2)…

An institutionalized, retarded, adult male's response to verbal commands was increased through the use of positive control of a discriminative stimulus. Operant conditioning was noted as a possible means of enabling retarded individuals to acquire behaviors fundamental to a self-help repetoire. (Editor)

Based on an MA thesis (Ahammer) submitted to West Virginia University.

In Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior, three categories of environmental control over instances of verbal behavior appear to be relevant to the study of infant vocal development: the mand, the tact, and the echoic categories. Procedures used in the remediation of language deficiencies and procedures found in work in the area of language…

The results of a group of studies, the objective of which was to clarify the conditions that account for the effectiveness of verbal approbation, are reported. Among the most significant findings were: (1) that the reinforcement properties of verbal approval are susceptible to distortion, misinterpretation or enhancement and must be applied in a…

TO STUDY THE EFFECTS OF OVERTRAINING ON REVERSAL AND NONREVERSAL SHIFTS OF CUES, 96 NORMAL (MEAN AGE = 117 MONTHS, MEAN IQ = 109.8) AND 96 RETARDED CHILDREN (MEAN AGE = 119 MONTHS, MEAN IQ = 70.1) WERE TESTED ON A SIMULTANEOUS 2-CHOICE DISCRIMINATION TASK. SUBJECTS WERE TRAINED ON TWO LEVELS (CRITERION AND OVERTRAINING). FOLLOWING TRAINING ON THE…

Research on learning and conditioning suggests that verbal response modification does not occur in the absence of the subject's ability to define verbally (1) the response-reinforcement relationships and (2) his intention to change his behavior in the direction of reinforcement. This seems to be true for operant conditioning of verbal behavior,…