Script fading was used to teach three youths with autism to initiate and sustain verbal interactions under stimulus control consistent with the natural environment. The youths learned to engage in verbal interactions during simulated shopping trips and during visits to community stores. The effectiveness of script fading was examined using a…

This paper discusses different approaches to language acquisition in relation to children's acquisition of word order in "wh"-questions in English and Norwegian. While generative models assert that children set major word order parameters and thus acquire a rule of subject-auxiliary inversion or generalized verb second (V2) at an early stage, some…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of video modeling to teach fire extinguishing behaviors to three young adults with moderate intellectual disabilities. A multiple probe design across three fire extinguishing behaviors and replicated across three students was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the video-based program. Results indicate that…

Three experiments identified factors that did and did not enhance the formation of two-node four-member equivalence classes when training and testing were conducted with trials presented in a trace stimulus pairing two-response (SP2R) format. All trials contained two separately presented stimuli. Half of the trials, called within-class trials,…

Responds to the comments of LoSchiavo F. M. and Shatz M. A.; Webster G. D., Nichols A. L., and Schember T. O.; Stroebe W. and Nijstad B.; and Haeffel et al. on the author's original article regarding the assertion that American psychology focuses too narrowly on Americans while neglecting the other 95% of the world's population. The author…

An important goal for all students is the ability to function independently throughout the school day--moving from one location to the next, organizing required materials, completing necessary tasks, and applying skills learned in one setting to other settings when appropriate. Although this goal is a priority for all students, it is even more…

This 5-wave longitudinal study examines linkages over time between adolescents' perceptions of relationships with parents and friends with respect to support, negative interaction, and power. A total of 575 early adolescents (54.1% boys) and 337 middle adolescents (43.3% boys) participated. Path analyses mainly showed bidirectional associations…

Claudia Buchmann, Dennis Condron and Vincent Roscigno's study, titled "Shadow Education, American Style: Test Preparation, the SAT and College Enrollment," demonstrates that vigorous use of expensive test preparation tools, such as private classes and tutors, significantly boosts scores on standardized exams such as the SAT or ACT. This…

Purpose: This paper seeks to examine whether the primary factors motivating the career plans of high-achieving Indian adolescents vary between academic specializations. Particular attention is to be paid to differences between science and business students. Design/methodology/approach: The study surveyed approximately 2,700 secondary school…

We are currently at an exciting juncture in developing effective means for assessing so-called 21st-century skills in an innovative yet reliable fashion. One of these avenues leads through the world of "epistemic games" (Shaffer, 2006a), which are games designed to give learners the rich experience of professional practica within a discipline.…

Although Sloutsky agrees with our interpretation of our data, he argues that the totality of the evidence supports his claim that children make inductive generalisations on the basis of similarity. Here we take issue with his characterisation of the alternative hypotheses in his informal analysis of the data, and suggest that a thorough Bayesian…

Purpose: This study examined how repeated presentations of words in noise affected understanding of both trained and untrained words in noise (in isolation and in sentences). Method: Eight older listeners with hearing impairment completed a word-based auditory training protocol lasting approximately 12 weeks. Training materials were presented in a…

Two identities for the Bernoulli and for the Euler numbers are derived. These identities involve two special cases of central combinatorial numbers. The approach is based on a set of differential identities for the powers of the secant. Generalizations of the Mittag-Leffler series for the secant are introduced and used to obtain closed-form…

Meta-analytic reliability generalizations (RGs) are limited by the scarcity of reliability reporting in primary articles, and currently, RG investigators lack a method to quantify the impact of such nonreporting. This article introduces a stepwise procedure to address this challenge. First, the authors introduce a formula that allows researchers…

A functional analysis indicated that chronic eye poking exhibited by a woman with profound mental retardation persisted in the absence of social contingencies. We initiated a procedure in which a therapist delivered a punisher (mild reprimand) contingent on eye poking in the presence, but not the absence, of a neutral stimulus (wristbands).…