From the first mention of impairments in attention in the scientific literature by the Scottish physician Alexander Crichton in 1798, the correlation between educational attainment and learning has been persistently noted. Since then, the impact of attention deficits on school achievement has been a central component in a significant portion of…

Researchers have demonstrated for practitioners how to use multiple-schedules preparations to thin initially dense schedules of reinforcement during functional communication training, without sacrificing benefits associated with dense schedules of reinforcement for manding. However, special considerations may be required for practitioners to…

I conducted a descriptive study consisting of 30 preschool participants with and without disabilities to examine the relation between the 3 bidirectional operants. The bidirectional operants were speaker-as-own-listener cusps, which included bidirectional verbal operants between people, bidirectional self-talk conversational units, and…

One experiment with rats explored whether an extinction-cue prevents the recovery of extinguished lever-pressing responses. Initially, rats were trained to perform one instrumental response (R1) for food in Context A, and a different instrumental response (R2) in Context B. Then, responses were extinguished each in the alternate context (R1 in…

People with developmental disorders (DD) often display high levels of selective eating, which can result in micronutrient deficiencies. It is therefore essential to explore ways to increase dietary variety in this population. To identify different types of interventions promoting increased acceptance of new foods or dietary variety for DD…

Previous research has evaluated contrived motivating operations to teach mands for information. However, literature evaluating acquisition of the mand "when?" is comparatively limited. As an extension of Shillingsburg, Bowen, Valentino, & Pierce (2014), we taught three children with autism to engage in mands for information using…

A classroom exercise is described in which college students take part in creating and supporting an evolutionary hypothesis that explains effort grunting. The exercise holds their interest throughout and readies them to understand hypotheses of animal and plant evolution. It informs them about the dependence of cultural evolution upon biological…

Despite an abundance of research on interventions to improve social skills of young children with intellectual disabilities (ID), there is limited research on interventions aimed at improving social skills of adults with ID. The purpose of this single-subject study was to evaluate the outcomes of the Behavioral Opportunities for Social Skills…

One measure of success for interventions treating problem behavior is the effects achieved in the face of a challenge (e.g., changes in reinforcement schedules, lapses in treatment integrity); one hopes to demonstrate persistence of appropriate alternatives and the absence of resurgence of target behaviors. The present study successfully treated…

This study evaluated the effects of four instructional variants on instruction following under changing reinforcement schedules using an operant task based on Hackenberg and Joker's "Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior," 62, 367-383 (1994) experimental preparation. Sixteen college-aged adults served as participants and were…

We investigated the in vivo role of protein degradation during intermediate (ITM) and long-term memory (LTM) in "Aplysia" using an operant learning paradigm. The proteasome inhibitor MG-132 inhibited the induction and molecular consolidation of LTM with no effect on ITM. Remarkably, maintenance of steady-state protein levels through…

Young children with autism may fail to mand using a range of frames (e.g., "I want," "May I have," "Please give me"). We examined the effects of simultaneous script training and script fading on acquisition and maintenance of varied mand frames with six preschool children with autism. For participants who did not…

Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) refers to a wide range of aided and unaided modes that are employed with a diverse group of people to support a range of language and communication outcomes. Children whose comprehension of spoken language greatly exceeds their ability to express themselves within that modality can be described as…

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…

Manding for preferred items and activities is a critical skill for young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, little research has evaluated procedures to teach children with ASD to mand with their peers. This study evaluated the effects of a teaching package involving least-to-most prompting to increase peer-directed vocal…