Submitted in partial fulfillment of the PhD degree at the University of Connecticut and supported by Grant M-1099 from the National Institute of Mental Health.

This training manual is designed to prepare behavior assistants to teach parents and other family members how to use operant conditioning techniques to solve family problems with children. Readers are warned not to attempt to put the recommended procedures to actual use until the text is fully comprehended. Chapter I gives arguments to justify the…

An experimental course in introductory psychology at Georgetown University utilizes principles of operant reinforcement to modify verbal behavior in the classroom situation. The major facet of the program is a student-student interview. Interviews are scheduled after each student reads a portion of the assigned text. One student, the listener,…

TWO EXPERIMENTS WERE CONDUCTED TO CLASSIFY AND TO CONDITION REWARD RESPONSIVENESS IN KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN. IN THE FIRST EXPERIMENT, 207 CHILDREN WITH A MEDIAN AGE OF 6.0 WERE CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO THEIR RESPONSIVENESS TO A HIERARCHY OF REWARDS. AFTER TWO SESSIONS INVOLVING TWO-CHOICE INSTRUMENTAL CONDITIONING TASKS, 60 PERCENT OF THE CHILDREN…

The nature and significance of the conditioning of fetal and neonatal response systems for later learning was not clearly understood. Therefore, subjects chosen for this research project were people who had been trained in experiential recall. During recall the subjects spontaneously reported what appeared to be auditory components of a complex…

Reasoning from recent psycholinguistic research, it was predicted that discrimination between two monochromatic stimuli would be poorer when they belong to the same color category, better when they belong to different color categories in the language of the observer. Accordingly, it was predicted that hue discrimination functions vary…

Several 3- to 5-year-old children participated in this study designed to discover the necessary procedures to establish nonresponding in preschool children during delay of reinforcement. The children were divided into two groups: (1) the programed group (PG), to which a 60-second delay period was introduced gradually and (2) the baseline group…

Two 4-year-old children were shown the use of an apparatus whereby they could obtain toys and candy by making certain responses. The apparatus was a matching-to-sample device on which were arranged five response buttons in a circle and one in the middle. Each response button had a display window for the stimulus. Four of the five windows on the…

This state of the art paper focuses on the skills and competencies needed by teachers working with severely handicapped children. Analyzed are the applications of behavior principles, systematic program building (task analysis), and instructional procedures to the acquisition of such basic skills as self-feeding and walking. Noted is the…

Proposed is a means of modifying soiling behavior of students (in grades K-3) in a regular classroom. Outlined are daily measurement, baseline, contingency, and teacher training procedures for the system involving verbal praise and activity time rewards. Also described are the evaluation design, special learning materials, and generalization and…

A 10-year-old boy with inappropriate social behavior was placed in a program of positive reinforcement and response cost. The boy earned plastic coins for good behavior and lost coins for inappropriate behavior. Rewards for given levels of earnings included extra recess time and field trips. Inappropriate behaviors decreased from a mean of 6.8…

This experiment sought to determine if the extinction of anti Afro-American attitudes in Euro-American kindergarten children was possible. Also investigated was whether or not these conditioning procedures were equally effective regardless of the sex of Ss. A total of 37 Euro-American children were randomly selected from kindergarten classes and…