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open access

Identification of environmental determinants of behavior disorders through functional analysis of precursor behaviors

Description: Methods for the determining the functional properties of problem behaviors are necessary for the design of successful treatments. Many of the currently utilized methodologies are chosen based on their speed, ease of application or for the perceived risk-reduction they afford. However, when thoroughly analyzed many of these methods fall short of their intended purpose. The current study attempted to assess dangerous problem behavior through a functional assessment of functionally related precurs… more
Date: May 2001
Creator: Churchill, Robert
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Effects of Combining Positive and Negative Reinforcement During Training.

Description: The purpose of this experiment was to compare the effects of combining negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement during teaching with the effects of using positive reinforcement alone. A behavior was trained under two stimulus conditions and procedures. One method involved presenting the cue ven and reinforcing successive approximations to the target behavior. The other method involved presenting the cue punir, physically prompting the target behavior by pulling the leash, and deliverin… more
Date: May 2007
Creator: Murrey, Nicole A.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Adolescent Goals and Their Reports of What They do to Achieve Those Goals

Description: Twenty-five adolescents' ranking of a set of equally highly valued goals on a Paired-comparisons Survey was compared with what adolescents say they are doing to achieve those goals. Results of the Paired-comparisons Survey showed that adolescents ranked career, interpersonal, and educational goals rather high and reputation and self-presentation goals rather low. Results analyzed with a contingency coefficient and biserial correlation indicated that not all number one ranked goals had the same … more
Date: May 2000
Creator: Lucky, Derek
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Effects of Interspersed Trials and Density of Reinforcement on Accuracy, Looking Away, and Self-Injurious Behavior of a Child with Autism

Description: This research examines the effects of task interspersal and density of reinforcement on several behaviors of an autistic 6-year-old boy during the performance of a visual matching task and two auditory matching tasks. Experiment 1 investigated the effects of interspersing high and low accuracy tasks on correct matching responses, positions of matching responses, looking away, and self-injurious behavior (SIB). The effects of interspersed trials were evaluated using an ABAB multiple treatments d… more
Date: May 2000
Creator: Ybarra, Rita
Partner: UNT Libraries

The Effects of Response Restriction on Non-Socially Maintained Self-Injury

Description: This study examined the effects of response restriction (blocking and protective equipment) on subsequent durations of self-injury with two female participants with developmental disabilities. First, a functional analysis was conducted with each participant to identify potential maintaining variables of the self-injury. Second, access to the response was systematically restricted in a multiple schedule restriction paradigm. A baseline extended alone was conducted without the restriction compone… more
Access: Restricted to UNT Community Members. Login required if off-campus.
Date: May 2003
Creator: Blevins, Travis
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Evaluation of the Easter Seals North Texas Autism Treatment Program: Progress in Meeting Program Mission

Description: Applied behavior analysis (ABA) remains at the forefront of effective interventions for children with autism. In some cases, the high cost of treatment and other environmental factors limit families from accessing services. The Easter Seals North Texas (ESNT) Autism Treatment Program (ATP) was created to reach high risk, underserved families in the North Texas area by providing early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) services to children with autism. This evaluation was conducted to anal… more
Date: May 2010
Creator: Pritchett, Malika Naomi
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Effects of Biofeedback and Verbal Feedback on the Training and Maintenance of Diaphragmatic Breathing

Description: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a computer program on the training and maintenance of diaphragmatic breathing. The biofeedback portion was visual computer training and the results were displayed concurrently with participants' breathing responses to monitor display. The verbal feedback portion was praise that was given and recorded when participants responded with predominantly diaphragmatic breathing at the scheduled moment and response instruction that was given when … more
Date: May 2003
Creator: Armstrong, Earl E.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Mediated Generalization of the Effect of Reprimands Across Two Topographies of Self-Injury

Description: This study sought to assess the effects of pairing a neutral stimulus with a reprimand contingent on occurrences of two topographies of problem behavior. Using a multiple baseline withdrawal with a nested multi-element design, contingencies were first applied to eye poking and, subsequently, to a second behavior, skin picking. In each case, the participant wore wristbands (a previously neutral stimulus) during treatment sessions. Results indicated that the reprimands were effective in decreasin… more
Date: May 2004
Creator: Kliethermes, Lana L.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Shaping Cows' Approach to Humans Using Positive and Negative Reinforcement

Description: Negative reinforcement can be a powerful tool for behavior analysts, yet it is often overlooked as a treatment method. Pryor (1999) outlines a method for approaching a "timid" animal using a combination of negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement. When the animal stands still, the human operates a clicker, and then retreats from the animal. Gradually, the human moves closer to the animal through the clicking and retreating shaping process. Once the human is standing close enough, food … more
Date: May 2005
Creator: Morehead, Melissa L.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Easter Seals North Texas Autism Treatment Program Evaluation: Child Progress

Description: This study reports and evaluates child outcome measures at a non-profit autism treatment program providing applied behavior analysis (ABA) based services to children age 3 to 8. To accomplish this, a review was conducted of available outcome data for a 1 year period. Several categories of outcome measures have been reported in the autism treatment literature (post-intervention educational placement, cognitive status, developmental and achievement status and/or progress, autism symptom reduction… more
Date: May 2010
Creator: Brunson, Lashanna Yvette
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Intermodal Stimulus Compounding with Ambient Odors Produces Averaging in Rats

Description: In an organism's natural environment, there are always an uncountable number of stimuli, and stimulus features, available to gain control over behavior. When these component stimuli are presented simultaneously, this new stimulus compound can occasion a previously unseen effect on behavior. Stimulus compounding is a method used to better understand how variables in stimulus features may impact the final effect on an organism's responding when presented with a stimulus compound. While stimulus c… more
Date: May 2023
Creator: Kirkland, Sophia B.
Partner: UNT Libraries

Suppressive effects of a stimulus correlated with reprimands for automatically-maintained eye poking.

Description: A functional analysis, conducted to assess the variables maintaining the chronic eye poking of a female diagnosed with profound mental retardation, indicated that the behavior persisted in the absence of social contingencies. A procedure was initiated in a training environment in which a punisher (mild reprimand) was delivered contingent on eye poking in the presence, but not in the absence, of a neutral stimulus (wristbands). Using a combination of multiple baseline and multielement experiment… more
Access: Restricted to UNT Community Members. Login required if off-campus.
Date: May 2003
Creator: McKenzie, Scott Daniel
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

An 8-Step Program: Shaping and Fixed-Time Food Delivery Effects on Several Approximations and Undesired Responses in Goats.

Description: This study investigated the effects of a shaping program for halter training across 8 steps in the program and 4 trial-terminating, or "undesirable," responses. Three La Mancha goats (Capra hircus) located at the Frank Buck Zoo in Gainesville, Texas were used for the study. A fixed-time 15 s (FT-15 s) was used during the baseline conditions, to examine the effects of response contingent and response-independent food deliveries, as well as to examine what preliminary steps might not necessarily … more
Date: May 2003
Creator: Fernandez, Eduardo J.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

A Safe and Fast Deworming Procedure for Horses

Description: Most horse owners administer oral deworming medication to their horses on a set schedule, often six times per year. The deworming process involves using a plastic syringe to inject a thick paste into the horse's mouth. Most horse owners do not specifically train their horses to accept this procedure. Consequently, many horses resist the procedure and some horses engage in behaviors, such as head shaking, pulling away, or even rearing, that may be dangerous to humans or to themselves. This study… more
Date: May 2022
Creator: Ward, Jessica Lauren
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Effects of Using Arbitrary Symbols in Naming Procedures with Adults

Description: Naming refers to encountering a new word and subsequently being able to use it both expressively and receptively. Sometimes, this can happen in as little as a single experience. Several recent studies have explored factors that influence the acquisition of naming in adults. However, these studies used familiar stimuli for which the participants already had names. In these studies, preexisting stimulus-response relations with the stimuli could have impeded the acquisition of new names for some p… more
Date: May 2022
Creator: Jaramillo, Andia
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Effects of Instructions on Schedule Sensitivity

Description: There are many situations in which human performances appear insensitive to changing contingencies of reinforcement when compared to nonhuman operant performances. Explanations of these discrepancies have appealed to rule-governance and have provided some evidence that instructions produce these differences by restricting response alternatives as well as functioning as discriminative stimuli for other contingencies. In order to further evaluate these potential functions, a canonical study on ru… more
Date: May 2020
Creator: Butcher, Grayson M
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Emergence of Receptive and Expressive Language through Stimulus-Specific Consequences

Description: An important question in teaching language is, what accounts for the emergence of either receptive or expressive labels when teaching only one of them? The teaching procedures in the present study were intended to reproduce the natural development of bidirectional naming in which caregivers comment on the items a child is interacting with and children echo those vocalizations they hear. Thus, the only vocalizations presented by the researcher during teaching occurred after the learner pointed t… more
Date: May 2021
Creator: Spurgin, Destiny
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Discriminative Control of Behavioral Variability in Video Game Play

Description: Creativity can be a useful skill in today's classrooms and workplaces. When individuals talk about creativity, it's unclear what the controlling variables are when we tact behavior as "creative." Research in understanding the processes behind behaviors that are considered "creative" would assist in identifying functional relations and provide insight on how to teach creativity. Since creativity is often described as doing something different from the norm, behavioral variability may be a potent… more
Date: May 2023
Creator: Arias, Gabriela Isabel
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Oral Syringe Training Animals: Indiscriminable and Discriminable Punishment Contingencies

Description: Animals are commonly trained to perform behaviors during routine husbandry procedures. However, some husbandry procedures have aversive consequences when the real procedure is performed. This commonly results in loss of the trained behavior. The present study assessed whether maintaining the antecedent environmental stimulus conditions between appetitive and aversive outcomes would prevent this effect and, conversely, whether adding a stimulus discrepancy would facilitate this effect. Three dom… more
Date: May 2013
Creator: Erickson, Emilie Jane
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

On the Further Exploration of Interactions between Equivalence Classes and Analytic Units

Description: Sidman's (2000) theory of stimulus equivalence predicts an interaction between the development of analytic units and the development of equivalence relations. Previous research has documented these interactions (stewart, Barnes-Holmes, Roche, & Smeets, 2002; Vaidya & Brackney, 2014), therefore the current study attempted to replicate the effects seen in Vaidya & Brackney, 2014 (Experiment 2). Baseline conditional discriminations were trained for two sets of three, three-member classes, while pa… more
Date: May 2016
Creator: Stancato, Stefanie S.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Effects of Textual Fluency on the Rate of Acquisition and Application of Intraverbal Relations

Description: Intraverbal behavior governs core elements of academic and intellectual behavior. These intraverbal relations can be explicitly taught when an individual is prompted to provide an appropriate response with pictures, text, or other stimuli following a verbal stimulus. It is possible that a focus on fluency of the target repertoires may lead to more conclusive data. the current study assessed the effects of precision teaching based instruction for component textual repertoires on the acquisition … more
Date: May 2012
Creator: Shrontz, Rachael E.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Equines Do Not Live for Grass Alone: Teaching Equines with Social Interaction

Description: Most horse training methods heavily rely on negative reinforcement and punishment. However, there is a movement in the horse community to utilize positive reinforcement to meet training goals. Although food has been used effective as a reinforcer with horses, social interaction has also been demonstrated to function as a positive reinforcer for animals. Utilizing social interaction as a reinforcer may lead to several benefits for both the trainer and animal. Some of the benefits can be improved… more
Date: May 2020
Creator: Nishimuta, Maasa
Partner: UNT Libraries

The Effects of a Conflicting Instruction on a Fr 5 Performance

Description: The purpose of this experiment was to evaluate the effects of a conflicting instruction on FR-5 performances by an ABABC design. After all four college students were consistently pressing 1-5-3 followed by sound-clips, the schedule value changed to FR-5 (A). Then they were presented with the written instruction "Press 426" (B) in addition to the previous condition. In the last condition (C), 1-5-3 responses were then scheduled for extinction in three participants and the reinforcer was changed … more
Access: Restricted to UNT Community Members. Login required if off-campus.
Date: May 2001
Creator: Koremura, Yuka
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

A Descriptive Analysis of the Use and Effect of a Self-management Project in an Undergraduate Course in Behavior Analysis

Description: Undergraduate male and female students enrolled in an introductory behavior analysis course with minimal instruction on self-management were given modified exploratory logs to use in a self-management project. Students self-monitored behavior via the log, constructed their own interventions, and reported changes in behavior and extent of success in a write up at course end. Changes in self-reported descriptions in the logs as well as the written results of a pre and post survey of emotional res… more
Date: May 2013
Creator: Lamancusa, Michelle
Partner: UNT Libraries
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