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open access

The Effects of Modeling, Roleplaying and Feedback on the Performance of Teachers of Children with Autism

Description: Teachers providing treatment to children with autism are responsible for implementing numerous procedures. Teacher training has not been addressed extensively in the literature. This study employed a multiple baseline design to evaluate the effects of a training package incorporating modeling, roleplaying and feedback on teacher performance. Results indicated that the teacher implemented correct teaching episodes following training. Changes in teacher performance were only observed when the tra… more
Date: August 1999
Creator: Edwards, Carla Ward
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

A Comparison of Points Versus Sounds as Reinforces in Human Operant Research

Description: Research shows that human operant behavior typically differs from non-human operant behavior on schedules of reinforcement. These differences in performance may be related to differences between the experimental preparations used to study human and non-human operant behavior. One such difference is the type of reinforcer used. This experiment analyzed the differential effects of points alone, points backed up by money, and sounds on schedule performance of human subjects. Results show that soun… more
Date: August 1999
Creator: Rouse, Susan L.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Determining the Relation Between the Moments of Acquisition of Baseline Conditional Discriminations and the Emergence of Equivalence Relations

Description: The experiment was an attempt to gain a more precise understanding of the temporal relation between the development of analytic units and equivalence relations. Two prompting procedures were used during training to pinpoint when eight subjects learned the conditional discriminations. Near simultaneous presentation of probe and training trials allowed for examination of the temporal relation between conditional discrimination acquisition and derived performances on stimulus equivalence probes. T… more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Swisher, Melissa J.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Analyzing Contingencies of Behavioral and Cultural Selection

Description: A choice paradigm was used to evaluate allocation of interlocking behavior of two groups of two participants between responses having operant consequences only and responses having cultural consequences. In a discrete trial BABABAB design, each participant could select one of three options, which delivered either 3 or 5 points. In B (cultural consequence) conditions, two of the options had additional effects: the 3-point option also added 3 points to the other participant's earnings, and one of… more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Hunter, Chad S.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

A Training Program to Facilitate Caregiver Involvement in School Meetings

Description: Caregivers of children with autism will likely meet with many school professionals once their children become school-aged. These meetings can be intimidating for caregivers who are unfamiliar with special education terminology and protocol, and caregivers may feel ineffective when communicating with school personnel. The purpose of this study is to describe a training curriculum to teach caregivers ways in which to communicate during meetings with school professionals, including the kinds of qu… more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Barahona, Heather
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Effects of a Communication Training Workshop on the Verbal Behavior of Caregivers

Description: This study evaluated the effectiveness of a workshop designed to train adults to use supportive verbal behavior during distressful situations. Participants were trained to provide descriptive, empathetic and hopeful statements using instructions, rationales, modeling, role-play, feedback, and rehearsal. A pre-post design was used to analyze the effects of the training on verbal and non-verbal behaviors of four females during simulation scenarios. Results indicate all four participants provided … more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Blell, Zainab D.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Effects of Reinforcer Magnitude on a Fixed Time Food Delivery Treatment of Pica

Description: The purpose of the current study was to examine the effects of using fixed time schedules with different magnitudes of stimulus delivery as treatment for pica. A functional assessment was conducted, which indicated that pica occurred across experimental conditions and was most frequent in the absence of social stimulation or contingencies. A competing stimulus assessment was then conducted to identify stimuli that could potentially compete with pica during NCR. Subsequently, an evaluation of… more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Lyon, Nathan Scott
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Effects of Priming and Contingent Attention on Novel Play Episodes in a Child with Autism

Description: This study evaluated the effects of priming and contingent attention procedures on play variability in a child with autism. During baseline, numbers of novel play episodes, different play episodes, and actions occurred at low rates. Priming procedures did not produce desired change. When contingent attention was implemented, significant increases occurred in novel play episodes, different actions, and different play episodes. These results show that attention contingent on variable play episode… more
Date: August 2002
Creator: Josendale, Julianne R.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Effects of a Feedback Package on the Facial Orientation of a Young Girl with Autism During Restricted and Free Operant Conditions

Description: A multiple baseline design across activities and people was used to assess the effectiveness of a feedback package on the facial orientation of a young girl with autism. During baseline, observations indicated low rates of facial orientation and high rates of gaze avoidance during conversation (restricted operant) and play (free operant) conditions. After treatment, facial orientation rates increased and gaze avoidance rates decreased to levels similar to typically-developing peers and maintain… more
Date: August 2000
Creator: Jacobs, Wendy Lynn
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Effects of Goal Setting, E-mail Feedback and Graphic Feedback on the Productivity of Public School Attendance Clerks

Description: A package intervention, consisting of daily-adjusted goal setting, e-mail feedback, and graphic feedback, was used in a public school attendance office to increase the efficiency with which 3 attendance clerks documented student attendance. During the intervention phase, the attendance secretary set a daily goal for each attendance clerk. This goal was a percentage of student absences to be coded and entered in the school computer program. After establishing a daily goal, the attendance secreta… more
Date: August 2000
Creator: Rexroat, Robin D.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Teacher Training: An Examination of Skill Acquisition, Generalization, and Increases in Child Appropriate Behavior

Description: The effects of a training package (modeling, role-playing, and feedback) were evaluated using a multiple baseline across skill areas. Two trainers taught two teachers to use basic intervention skills that included components of both discrete trial teaching (DTT) and the Natural Language Paradigm (NLP). Training occurred in the context of one task. Generalization was assessed with two untrained tasks. Teachers' responses in the target task increased following training, as did appropriate respond… more
Date: August 2000
Creator: Sawyer, Rebecca Jo Moore
Partner: UNT Libraries

Maintaining behavior in a child with autism using a previously neutral stimulus, a remote control tactile stimulus, as the consequence

Description: Few studies have investigated methods for establishing neutral stimuli as conditioned reinforcers in human subjects. Conditioned reinforcers, however, can alleviate some of the problems encountered in applied behavior analytic (ABA) therapy for children with autism, such as satiation and suitability of reinforcers for specific environments. A series of reversals evaluated the effects of a conditioning procedure involving pairing a neutral stimulus, the remote control stimulus (RCT), with an ide… more
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Date: August 2000
Creator: Wheat, Leigh Ann Stiles
Partner: UNT Libraries

Loading the Problem Loader: The Effects of Target Training and Shaping on Trailer Loading Behavior of Horses in a Natural Setting

Description: The purpose of this study was to develop an effective method for trailer loading horses based on the principles of positive reinforcement. Target training and shaping were used to teach trailer loading behavior in a natural setting. Five AQHA mares were selected for this program. All five had been loaded before through the use of punishment. A two-horse trailer was used. Approximations to loading and inappropriate behaviors were the dependent variables. When intervention started the target was … more
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Date: August 2000
Creator: Ferguson, Dawnery
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Toward a systematic evaluation of evaluating favorable conditions in a parent training program: The pursuit of happiness.

Description: Research has shown that parents of children with disabilities, such as autism, experience significantly higher stress levels than parents of typically developing children. It has been suggested that parent education programs, in particular naturalistic communication training, will reduce parental stress. Most of the literature in this area has relied on parental reports and has only focused on decreasing stress and has not directly addressed increasing alternate feelings, such as happiness. In … more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Broome, Jessica L.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Topographical analysis of reinforcement produced variability: Generalizations across settings and contingencies.

Description: This study evaluated the effects of programming a variability contingency on one object and the generalization of variability across other objects and contingencies when the defining features of the variable responses were topographical differences. A dog's interactions with five different objects were measured under both ANY (where any physical contact with the object would be reinforced on a fixed ratio schedule) and the VAR contingencies (where only the novel responses per trial would be rei… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Gomez, Francisco
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Evaluating a positive parenting curriculum package: An analysis of the acquisition of key skills.

Description: With the increase in survival for children with cancer, part of the focus of current research is aimed towards evaluating how these children are adapting psychosocially. Neurocognitive deficits have been well established. However, there are multiple facets encompassing quality of life, including general mental health, lifestyles and health behaviors, and academic and cognitive functioning. The relationship between neurocognitive and psychosocial functioning has yet to be thoroughly evaluated. T… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Berard, Kerri P.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Evocative and Repertoire-Altering Effects of Contingency-Specifying Stimuli

Description: The effects of deadlines in contingency-specifying stimuli among nine 4 to 5 year old children were investigated. Each child was given verbal statements differing in the specified deadline, the delivery of the reinforcer, and the opportunity to respond. The results indicated: (a) statements not specifying deadlines or reinforcers failed to control the children's behavior reliably, (b) specifying deadlines, either immediate or delayed, and immediate reinforcers exerted reliable control over the … more
Date: August 1992
Creator: Mistr, Kathryn N. (Kathryn Noel)
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Effects of Single VI History on Human Concurrent VI VI Choice

Description: Two groups of human subjects pressed buttons on five different variable-interval (VI) reinforcement schedules presented for seven minutes each for 15 sessions. At session 16, the same VI schedules were programmed concurrently in each session either with or without a 5 s changeover delay (COD). The same schedule-correlated stimuli were employed in single and concurrent conditions. Two other groups responded on concurrent VI VI conditions from the first session with or without the COD. Response a… more
Date: August 1992
Creator: Madden, Gregory J. (Gregory Jude)
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Function-Altering Effects of Contingency-Specifying Stimuli

Description: Three children between the ages of 3 and 3 1/2 were asked to choose a colored object from an array of 5 colors in a baseline condition. After color preferences were established, stickers, small toys and praise were made contingent on choosing the least preferred color. After the first experimental condition resulted in consistent choosing of the least preferred color, a second experimental condition was implemented. At the beginning of each session a contingency-specifying stimulus (CSS) was pr… more
Date: August 1992
Creator: Ford, Victoria L.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Physiological Control of Verbal Behavior

Description: The current study sought to investigate whether physiological responses, such as the electrodermographic response (EDG) and/or the frontalis muscle electrical potential (EMG) could be developed as a source of control over verbal responses. Discrimination training procedures using points exchangeable for money were employed to condition verbal responses occasioned by minute interoceptive events with 2 adult human subjects. Specific verbal responses were reinforced in the presence of changes in E… more
Date: August 1992
Creator: Field, Douglas Preston
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Power of One Reinforcer

Description: Animal trainers use shaping to teach many behaviors. However, during shaping, the organism may engage in behaviors other than the target behavior or approximations to the target behavior. If the animal is engaged in other behaviors, the rate of reinforcement may decrease and the trainer may resort to what is sometimes referred to as a “desperation click.” That is, the trainer delivers one reinforcer for a behavior that is not a successive approximation to the target response. Anecdotal reports… more
Date: August 2013
Creator: Hunter, Mary E.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Measuring the Effect of Alternating In-class with Online Lecture on Student Learning in College Classrooms

Description: Personalized instruction has long been a goal of behavior analysis in the education of typically developing populations, one important element of which is the delivery of lectures in new formats. This study tested feasibility of online lecture delivery by comparing online and in-class delivery of lectures using an adapted alternating treatments design. Each week, the lecture component of a unit of an introductory behavior analysis course was presented either online or in-class, alternating wee… more
Date: August 2013
Creator: Kellerstedt, Brett G.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Exploring Fundamental Principles in the Study of Derived Relational Responding in Pigeons

Description: A persistent challenge for behaviorally-based accounts of learning has been providing an account of learning that occurs in the absence of systematically programmed contingencies of reinforcement. Symmetry, one type of emergent behavior, has been repeatedly demonstrated with humans, but has been considerably more difficult to demonstrate with non-humans. In this study, pigeons were exposed to a go/no-go procedure in which hue stimuli were presented full screen on a touchscreen monitor. Pigeons … more
Date: August 2013
Creator: Hinnenkamp, Jay Evan
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Effects of a Computer-based Self-instructional Training Package on Novice Instructors’ Implementation of Discrete Trial Instruction and a Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Intervention

Description: Discrete trial instruction (DTI) and naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions (NDBIs) are often incorporated into early intensive behavioral interventions for young children with autism. Recent advances in staff training methods have demonstrated that self-instructional manuals, video models, and computer-based training are effective and efficient ways to improve staff implementation of these teaching strategies however research in this area is limited. The current evaluation assesse… more
Date: August 2015
Creator: Horsch, Rachel M.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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