Several behaviors in a ski shop were identified as being deficient using Austin's Performance Diagnostic Checklist (2000) and Daniels and Daniels' PIC/NIC Analysis (2004). During a 4-week baseline, 7 cleaning behaviors were monitored and 5 were subsequently targeted in an intervention package using an ABC design. The intervention included: a task…

Knowledge of familiar people is essential to guide social interaction, yet there is uncertainty about whether semantic knowledge for people is stored in a categorical structure as for objects. Four priming experiments using hard-to-perceive primes investigated whether occupation forms a category connecting famous persons in semantic memory. Primes…

To examine the relationship between syntactic processes in language comprehension and language production, we compared structural persistence from sentence primes that speakers heard to persistence from primes that speakers produced. [Bock, J. K., & Griffin, Z. M. (2000). The persistence of structural priming: transient activation or implicit…

Two experiments were conducted to examine whether abrupt onsets are capable of reflexively capturing attention when they occur outside the current focus of spatial attention, as would be expected if exogenous orienting operates in a truly automatic fashion. The authors established a highly focused attentional state by means of the central…

Intrusive advising has been frequently used to encourage or require at-risk or probationary students to attend advising sessions. The efficacy of intrusive advising targeted to all students has received little attention. We implemented a case-control experiment with 501 first-year students at a large, urban, state university to test the efficacy…

Many everyday matching tasks taught to persons with developmental disabilities are visual-visual non-identity matching (VVNM) tasks, such as matching the printed word DOG to a picture of a dog, or matching a sock to a shoe. Research has shown that, for participants who have failed a VVNM prototype task, it is very difficult to teach them various…

This study explored the impact of the NICHD protocol to enhance the quantity and content of details reported by children with low verbal abilities. Thirty-four children aged from 6 to 14 were interviewed following their experience of sexual abuse. Half the interviews were conducted using the NICHD protocol. Results indicate that NICHD interviews…

"Selective mutism" is the term used to describe a disorder in which a person speaks only in restricted stimulus situations. Examination of single-subject research concerning selective mutism reveals the most popular and successful interventions to instate speech involve a combination of behavior modification procedures. The present research…

This article describes how fifth-grade students created collaborative online learning communities while discussing and responding to literature on an asynchronous message board. At their own initiative, students constructed and posted various types of literature response prompts, which elicited rich responses from their peers. Types of identified…

The hypotheses that there will be a significant difference (1) in the number of responses generated according to economic issues, (2) in the number of responses generated according to social issues, (3) in the number of responses generated between the category of economic issues and the category of social issues, (4) in cue ranking by response…

To investigate the effect of several cueing methods on paired-associate learning, 48 adult subjects were asked to learn pairs of city names and corresponding airport codes using special cueing procedures or standard anticipation procedures. Visibility of the response term, and hence cue strength, was varied tachistoscopically, adjusting the…

A five-year-old, severely handicapped boy was trained to activate an adapted battery-operated and electronically controlled toy. Training involved the use of verbal and three different types of physical prompts. Among findings were that physical prompting was effective in rapidly establishing the response and the response was later also performed…

A four-step sequential prompt instruction strategy for mildly handicapped students is outlined and suggestions are made for managing prompts during instruction and monitoring their use. (CL)

The current literacy crisis, which has spawned numerous studies and generated vigorous debate, is less about decreasing literacy and ability among the North American and worldwide population than it is about who controls literacy, how literacy is used, and who can use literacy. Most who claim there is a literacy crisis are reacting to the…

Whenever a fixed series of steps must be learned, the question arises as to the order in which they should be brought to mastery and any prompts used in the lesson withdrawn." The author examines the proposition that prompts should start to fade at or near the middle of a learning sequence. (Editor/AK)