This study found that, compared to measuring approach behaviors to a variety of stimuli, a forced-choice stimulus preference assessment used with four young children with severe mental retardation resulted in greater differentiation among stimuli and better predicted which stimuli would result in higher levels of responding when presented…

Offers an example of determining what the experts of psychology deem as essential concepts in their subfield by investigating the current principles in operant conditioning through surveys of the board of editors of the "Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior." Recommends concepts that are appropriate for up-to-date coverage of operant…

Presents a method for illustrating the continuity of behavior during schedules of reinforcement, focusing on a demonstration on computer-controlled movement tracking. Discusses how this method can be used to illustrate and stimulate discussion about topics such as the acquisition of operant behavior. (CMK)

Two experiments examined whether associating an imitation task with an operant task affected 6-month-olds' memory for either task. Results indicated that infants successfully imitated a puppet's action for up to 2 weeks only if the associated operant task (pressing a lever to activate a miniature train) was retrieved first. Follow-up study…

The relation between the rate of a response ("B") and the rate of its reinforcement ("R") is well known to be approximately hyperbolic: B = kR/(R + R[subscript o]), where k represents the maximum response rate, and R[subscript o] indicates the rate of reinforcers that will engender a response rate equal to half its maximum value. A review of data…

Speaker immersion is a tactic that uses multiple establishing operations to increase speaker behavior for individuals with limited mand and tact repertoires. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the effects of speaker immersion on the number of independent mands, tacts, and autoclitics emitted by young children with verbal delays. In the…

Operant conditioning techniques were used to modify verbal behavior in 18 institutionalized, trainable mentally handicapped mongoloids with chronological ages from 4-6 to 7-10 and mental ages from 2.0 to 2.10. Two instruments were constructed to evaluate language: a language test and a speech rating scale. Project leaders had no prior knowledge of…

An experimental psychology course which analyzes the broad probability of operant conditioning is described. (DE)

To replicate a study purporting to show positive effects of facilitative interpersonal functioning in a conditioning paradigm, 32 subjects were verbally conditioned within an experiment designed to vary preexperiment interview, facilitative level of the experimenter, and contingency of reinforcement. The present study failed to substantiate the…

Investigated were the effects of reinforcement contingencies in two different arithmetic situations--acquisition and proficiency with seven 8-11 year-old learning disabled boys. (Author/DB)

A successful behavior modification technique using a punch card to reward good behavior has been developed to teach exceptional children new academic, social and emotional behavior. (Author/CL)

The influence of negative affect on the retrieval of information from memory during infancy was investigated in two studies through the use of an operant conditioning paradigm. The procedure used, known as "mobile conjugate reinforcement," involves a free operant task in which an infant is reinforced for footkicking by the movement of an…

This experiment attempted to condition subject's answers to a questionnaire about study-related behaviors using verbal social reinforcement and to measure the extent to which this training affected rate of studying. For five of the six subjects, significant changes in study comments resulted. (Author)