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A Comparative Evaluation of Matrix Training Arrangements

Description: A common goal of instructional techniques is to teach skills effectively and efficiently. Matrix training techniques are both effective and efficient as they allow for the emergence of untrained responding to novel stimulus arrangements, a phenomenon known as recombinative generalization. However, it is unclear which type of matrix arrangement best promotes recombinative generalization. The current study compared two common matrix training approaches, an overlapping (OV) design and a non-overla… more
Date: May 2017
Creator: Cliett, Terra N.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

A Comparative Evaluation of Functional Analytic Methods

Description: The individual functional analysis (FA) is the most widely used method to identify variables that influence the occurrence of problem behavior. Researchers often modify the FA after the analysis reveals undifferentiated responding. The interview-informed synthesized contingency analysis (IISCA) is one of the most substantial variations of the FA that builds upon the FA modifications. We evaluated the use of the two different functional analytic methods, the FA and IISCA, and the subsequent func… more
Date: May 2018
Creator: Perkins, Crysta
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Would You Do Your Homework for a Chance to Improve Your Quiz Score?

Description: Students who complete homework generally do better on measures of academic performance such as quizzes, exams, and overall course grades. We examined the effects of contingent access to second quiz attempts on the percentage of undergraduate students completing homework to mastery. The study was conducted in an Introduction to Behavior Analysis course that, historically, had only 70% of students on average completing homework. An adapted multiple baseline design across sections was used for fou… more
Date: August 2014
Creator: Zimmerman, Karl J.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Induced “motivation”

Description: In the avian training community, a procedure has been utilized to maintain food reinforcer efficacy at high body weights. Elements of this procedure include limited holds and closed economies. To test this procedure, a baseline performance of keypecking on an FR 15 schedule at 80% ad lib weight for two pigeons was established. By imposing limited holds and a closed economy, rates of responding were increased compared to baseline, even while the pigeons were over 90% of their ad-lib body weights. more
Date: August 2011
Creator: Becker, April Melissa
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Evaluating the Effects of Public Postings on Energy Conservation Behavior at a Public University

Description: This study evaluated the effects of public postings on energy conservation behavior at a public university, using a multiple baseline design across three settings; bathrooms break rooms, and conference rooms. The behavior of building occupants was recorded to assess the frequency at which those individuals would turn lights off upon exiting an unoccupied room. The independent variables implemented by experimenters (light-switch plate stickers and laminated signs) had little to no effects on cum… more
Date: August 2011
Creator: Canisz, Eleni
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Effects of Capturing and Searching on the Acquisition of a Simple Arm Position

Description: The present experiment compared two methods of training a simple arm position using auditory feedback: capture and search. The participants were four right-handed female college students. During capture, auditory feedback was delivered by the experimenter after the participant moved along a single axis into the target position. During search, auditory feedback was produced by the computer after the participant left clicked a mouse inside the target location. The results of a multi-element desig… more
Date: August 2011
Creator: Heth, Travis R.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Effects of Conditional Discrimination Training on Symmetry and Semantic Priming

Description: Psychologists interested in the study of language find that people are faster at making decisions about words that are related than they are at making decisions about words that are not related – an effect called semantic priming. This phenomenon has largely only been document in laboratory settings using natural languages as contest and real words as stimuli. The current study explores the relation between the semantic priming effect and a laboratory procedure designed to give rise to performa… more
Date: August 2011
Creator: Hudgins, Caleb D.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Yummy Starts: A Constructional Approach to Food Selectivity with Children with Autism

Description: Food selectivity exhibited by children with autism creates a myriad of barriers for families and children, ranging from social to nutritional. The typical approach to food selectivity is pathological. The pathological approach attempts to eliminate food selectivity through the use of techniques such as escape extinction. While successful in decreasing aspects of food challenges, such as food refusals, the pathological approach does not necessarily establish desired responses to foods or mealtim… more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Cihon, Joseph Harvey
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Effects of a Human Resources Information Technology Intervention on Background Check Processing in a Financial Institution: a Process Level Analysis.

Description: The human resources department of a financial institution implemented a multi-component intervention to replace a paper-based hiring system. Organization-wide impacts included changes in the background check operations. To support changes, training was conducted and procedure manuals distributed. Turn time for background checks decreased, but a combination of factors may be responsible. Other metrics are either inconclusive or suggest a confounding variable, yet quality of work did not suffe… more
Date: August 2008
Creator: Mallari, Alexander David
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Choices in Reinforcer Delivery

Description: The current study consisted of two experiments, both of which were comparisons of choice conditions replicated across four participants. Four typically-developing pre-school children participated in this study. Experiment 1 evaluated participants' preference for choosing consequent stimuli prior to engaging in academic tasks (pre-session choice) versus choosing consequent stimuli each time criterion for reinforcement had been met within the session (within-session choice). In Experiment 2, pref… more
Date: August 2008
Creator: Law, Sarah Ann
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Identifying learn units in a naturalistic training program for children with autism and their families.

Description: Behavior analysts have proposed a primary measure, the "learn unit," to evaluate educational effectiveness. Past research has indicated this is a useful approach. The benefits of "learn units" may also apply to family interventions in autism. The current analysis evaluated the rates of learn units in a naturalistic parent-training program to determine if (1) definitions of learn units previously described in the literature can be reliably applied to family interventions and (2) an increased … more
Date: August 2008
Creator: Besner, Amanda Charlotte
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Comparison of Client Attendance, Attrition, and Outcomes in 2 Class System Packages.

Description: Using the principles of systems analysis as a guide, this study compared two class schedule formats used by Behavior Management and Parenting Services (BMAPS) in order to address the following research questions: 1) What effects do 2 different class formats have on student attrition and appointment keeping? 2) What effects do 2 different class formats have on student outcomes on a pre and posttest assessment? 3) What effects do 2 different class formats have on staff procedures? BMAPS provi… more
Date: August 2008
Creator: Berends, Valori
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Increasing activities and interests in a child dually diagnosed with PDD-NOS and DS.

Description: Expanding interests may be a behavioral cusp, resulting in widespread changes across skills, and therefore is particularly relevant in intervention programs for children with autism. Little research has addressed directly increasing the diversity of activities and interests for this population. This study describes a program developed to increase activities and interests in a girl dually-diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD-NOS) and Downs syndrome (DS). A multiple-baseline desig… more
Date: August 2008
Creator: Zeug, Nicole M.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

An Evaluation of Reinforcement Effects of Preferred Items During Discrete-Trial Instruction

Description: This study compared the relative reinforcing efficacy of high-preferred and low-preferred stimuli, as determined by two types of preference assessments, on acquisition rates in three children diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The study also evaluated the indirect effects of preference on students’ stereotypy and problem behavior during instructional periods. Participants were presented with a task and provided high or low-preferred stimuli contingent upon correct responding. Res… more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Rorer, Lynette
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

A Training Package for Parents and their Toddlers with Autism: Observed Changes in Parent Teaching Episodes, Child Turn Taking and Social Attending, and Parent-Child Engagement

Description: Research has shown that parents of children with autism report higher stress than parents of children with other developmental disabilities. It has been suggested that parent training programs, specifically naturalistic social-communication training, can reduce parental stress and enhance the quality of the parent-child relationship. Although the development of a multilevel assessment has been suggested, much of the research in this area has relied on measures of parent implementation fidelity … more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Hunt, Nina Marie
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

An Evaluation of Matrix Training Approaches for Teaching Compound Labels to Toddlers

Description: Matrix training techniques arrange instruction for stimulus relations that facilitate emergent responding to novel stimulus arrangements, which is a phenomenon known as recombinative generalization. The current study compared two common matrix training approaches, an overlapping (OV) design and a non-overlapping (NOV) design, with respect to arranging relations targeted for training. Two, typically-developing toddlers were taught compound action-object labels in either an OV or NOV matrix tra… more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Wilshire, Tayla C.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

A Multimodal Investigation of Renewal of Human Avoidance, Perceived Threat, and Emotion

Description: Many people who receive exposure-based treatments for anxiety disorders exhibit a return of fear and avoidance which is often referred to as renewal or relapse. Human and nonhuman research on fear conditioning and renewal has been instrumental in helping understand relapse in anxiety disorders. The purpose of this investigation was to examine renewal of human avoidance and assess whether avoidance may aid in sustaining renewal of fear responses. We adopted a multimodal measurement approach cons… more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Ludlum, Madonna L.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Effects of Fines on Cooperation in a Four-Person Prisoner’s Dilemma Game

Description: Cooperation is an important area of investigation for behavior analysis. The prisoner’s dilemma game (PDG) provides a useful scenario for studying cooperation in a behavior analytic paradigm. The PDG can be coupled with the concept of the metacontingency to investigate how various contingency arrangements support and promote cooperation in a group. Players in this experiment participated in a PDG and, in some conditions, were given the ability to fine other players but could not talk. The goal… more
Date: August 2011
Creator: Morford, Zachary H.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Can Positive Reinforcement Overcome Fear? An Investigation of Competing Contingencies

Description: Escape maintained behavior in dogs is generally displayed by one of two behaviors-fleeing or aggression. Once aggression is negatively reinforced by the removal of the aversive stimulus, it is very difficult to eliminate from the organism's repertoire. Counterconditioning is the process of pairing a positive reinforcer with an aversive stimulus in the attempts that an organism will no longer exhibit fear responses in its presence. This process must be done gradually with small approximations. M… more
Date: August 2011
Creator: Kunkel, Rebecca Ann
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

A Stimulus Control Analysis of Imprinting in a Human-Reared Pigeon

Description: Events that occur early in the life of birds greatly influence social and sexual preferences throughout the course of life. Traditionally, this is explained by a learning process known as imprinting. Young birds are thought to imprint to early stimuli, causing the development of permanent preferences for those stimuli. In the present study, imprinting is examined with respect to behaviors of an adult human-reared pigeon in several conditions. The subject was either presented with no stimulus, a… more
Date: August 2011
Creator: Varnon, Christopher A.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Transfer of Mand-to-Tact and Tact-to-Mand Topographies in Two Vocal-Verbal Children with Autism: A Replication and Extension Study

Description: Skinner (1957) suggested that different verbal operants are acquired independently of each other and establishing a verbal operant as a mand will not necessarily result in the appearance of a tact having the same response form and vice versa. Recent empirical research has found that newly acquired mands and tacts can be transferred to different relations without direct training. The present study investigated 1) how verbal responses taught as pure mands affect untrained tact relations; 2) how… more
Date: May 2009
Creator: Ruiz, Julio
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Retention, Endurance, Stability, and Application of Learned Performances as a Function of Training Condition

Description: A functional definition of fluency describes performance frequency ranges that predict retention, endurance, stability, application, and adduction as outcomes of practice. This experiment assessed these outcomes after different training conditions using a within-subject design. Participants in an experimental group learned new skills in a condition with rate and accuracy criteria, then in a yoked, rate-controlled condition with the same number of prompted responses and correct trials in practic… more
Date: December 2008
Creator: Cohen, Jason
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

A Sequential Analysis of Therapist and Child Social Behavior Following a Conditioned Reinforcement Procedure

Description: We conducted a contingency analysis to evaluate if a sequential relation between social initiations and positive social responses increased for both therapists and children with autism following a conditioned reinforcement procedure. Participants included child-therapist dyads, which were previously identified as having low rapport. These dyads were observed prior to and following an intervention designed to establish therapists' social behavior as a reinforcer. Sessions consisted of unstructur… more
Date: May 2016
Creator: Cortez, Kristi
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

A Laboratory Human Operant Examination of Extinction Bursts

Description: The present study examined operant extinction in a controlled setting using a human operant paradigm. Participants watched a preferred video. During the video, either the video or audio portion of the video was selectively removed, on average every 15 s. Participants could restore the video by pressing a force transducer. In one group, relatively low forces were required (250 g) and in the other relatively high forces were required (750 g). At the 20th and 30th minute during the session, th… more
Date: May 2016
Creator: Lilly, Bryanna
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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