UNT Theses and Dissertations - 129 Matching Results

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The Effects of Implementing a Reward-Based Version of Ostrom's Eight Design Principles as an Intervention Package on Responses in a Common Pool Resource (CPR) Game

Description: The aim of behavior analysis has always been to apply technologies rooted in basic behavioral principles to problems of societal importance (e.g., Skinner, 1948; 1953; 1987). One such problem is the Tragedy of the Commons - a phenomenon arising from systemic failures among a community, leading to the total collapse of a critical resource (Hardin, 1968). Elinor Ostrom's Eight Design Principles were developed to provide a framework for the self-management of common pool resources (CPRs; Ostrom, 1… more
Date: December 2023
Creator: Paterson, Ian Scott
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Using GIFs and Matrix Training to Teach Noun-Verb Tacts to Children with Autism

Description: Verbal behavior is a critical repertoire for children with autism spectrum disorder to acquire. Tacts—verbal behavior evoked by nonverbal stimuli—are important for communicating about the world around oneself. Noun-verb tacts are part of a robust tact repertoire and may be addressed during applied behavior analytic intervention. When acquiring noun-verb tacts, it is important that the speaker learn to respond to many variations of stimuli like novel combinations of learned nouns and verbs, whic… more
Date: December 2023
Creator: White, Alexandria Blayce
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Effects of Specific and Disguised Mands on Staff's Reinforcer Delivery

Description: Residential facilities for adults with developmental disabilities offer essential accommodations and support services, with fostering communication for residents as an important aspect of care. Despite the importance of communication, previous research has identified concerns about staff performance (SP) in facilitating positive social interactions, such as engaging in consequent-mediating behavior for residents' mands. Previous research has primarily focused on improving SP through skills-base… more
Date: December 2023
Creator: Richey, Caroline Nicole
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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An Evaluation of the Utility of Fixed Ratio 1 Schedule Contingent Reinforcement on Variability to Increase the Diversity of Activity Selections and the Treatment of Problem Behavior Occasioned by Interruption Routines

Description: Adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and intellectual disability (ID) are the majority of population in residential settings. Many clients in residential settings engage in problem behavior that interferes with their daily routine and work requirements. Restricted and repetitive behavior are one of the features of ASD diagnosis, typically in the form of invariable responding and predictable responses. Differential reinforcement has been used to produce and maintain response variability. I… more
Date: December 2023
Creator: Lin, Yu Chen
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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An Evaluation of Cross-Function Stimuli in the Treatment of Automatically Maintained Problem Behavior

Description: Noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) is a possible alternative to differential reinforcement of other behaviors (DRO) that may operate through a similar mechanism. In the research, the participant's problem behaviors were maintained by automatic reinforcement or even multiply maintained. NCR is the method to intervene with the participant who had no clinical effect on using sensory integration therapy (SIT) to reduce problem behaviors in the previous study. The results showed that NCR is an effect… more
Date: December 2023
Creator: Huang, Po-Kai
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Environmental Control of Pacing in Cougars

Description: Pacing, a common form of stereotypy in captive animals, poses challenges for animal welfare and conservation initiatives. The current study used a comprehensive measurement system to investigate the impact of introducing a food-related activity on the daily patterns of multiple behaviors, including stereotypic pacing, in two zoo-housed cougars. The results showed that, while the intervention did not mitigate pacing overall, it did cause a shift in the cougars' routines. This demonstrated the s… more
Date: December 2023
Creator: Fahlmann, Elisabeth Anne
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Increasing Caregiver Reliability on Anecdotal Assessments

Description: Functional analyses are the gold standard of confirming maintaining variables of problem behavior. Despite widespread support, many clinical settings instead use anecdotal assessments. These have been shown to have poor reliability when used by non-experts but can be useful for confirming maintaining variables of problem behavior when agreement has reached a certain level. We used behavior skills training to teach new staff member pairs behavior function to increase their reliability on these a… more
Date: December 2023
Creator: Drummond, Cody McPhail
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Analysis of Sensory Integration Techniques on Automatically Maintained Problem Behavior

Description: Sensory integration techniques are a common treatment procedure among occupational therapists. The goal is to "apply" input that competes with input from problem behavior. Although this is a commonly recommended intervention, there is limited empirical evaluation with adults with intellectual disabilities. Therefore, we evaluated the effectiveness of occupational therapist-suggested sensory stimuli on the automatically maintained problem behavior of adults. Specifically, we compared the effects… more
Date: December 2023
Creator: Pelletier, Danielle Renee
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Designing, Implementing, and Evaluating an Online Instructional Program to Teach Students to Evaluate Systemic Social Issues Using a Matrix Analysis

Description: This research aimed to determine the effects of an online training program on the accurate articulation of the concepts and elements needed to conduct a matrix analysis, the accuracy with which participants embedded these elements in a matrix analysis diagram, and the qualitative value of those elements. The development of the online training program was completed through a series of recursive steps. First, four literature searches regarding the matrix analysis, its foundational concepts, and u… more
Date: December 2022
Creator: Smith, Michaela M.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Effects of Skilled Dialogue Training on Behavior Analysts' Verbal Behavior Related to the Provision of Compassionate, Collaborative, and Culturally Responsive Care

Description: Despite the growing recognition of the importance of compassionate, collaborative, and culturally responsive care in behavior analysis, the training programs to develop relevant skills are meager. The purpose of the current study is to evaluate the effectiveness of Skilled Dialogue training for behavior analysts in improving the use of six strategies–welcoming, allowing, sense-making, appreciating, joining, harmonizing–when engaging in conversations with clients, colleagues and other profession… more
Date: December 2022
Creator: Kim, Bokyeong A.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries

Change AGENT Project Part 1: Training Staff to Make Responsive Decisions Based on Goals and Rationales and Evaluating the Effects on the Manding Progress of Children with Autism

Description: When autism interventionists within behavioral intervention programs continually assess the child's behavior and context and adjust their teaching behaviors accordingly, the child can quickly progress towards their goals. While evaluations of flexible behavior-change techniques implemented by experienced clinicians are present in the literature, systematic evaluations of staff training procedures to train interventionists in responsive decision making are lacking. In the current study, flexible… more
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Date: December 2022
Creator: Dotson, Anna M.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

An Extension of a Peer-Mentoring Training Program for College-Aged Students

Description: An important predictor of the success of a peer-mentoring program is the quality of the relationship between the peer mentor and the mentee. A previous study identified target outcomes, operationally defined target behaviors, and developed a computer-based instruction (CBI) training module to teach peer mentors relationship skills. The previous study suggested that the CBI training module increased target behaviors in pre-and post-tests that were typed. The current study replicated and extended… more
Date: December 2022
Creator: Luna Rodriguez, Araceli
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Effects of Voluntary and Involuntary Muscle Recruitment Training on the Strength of Isometric Muscle Contractions

Description: Approximately 50% of individuals who undergo total knee arthroplasty (TKA) fail to achieve a full functional recovery. Current physical therapy practices commonly utilize neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) to passively activate quadriceps muscles. This passive approach does not directly reteach the lost response, but can strengthen the atrophied muscle. Study 1 compared surface electromyography with biofeedback (sEMGBF) with a changing criterion design to NMES alone. Study 2 compared s… more
Date: December 2022
Creator: Armshaw, Gabriel Luke
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries

Change AGENT Project Part 2: Further Analyses of Progress Following Staff Training on Responsive, Goal-Directed, and Rationale-Based Decision Making

Description: Evidence-based practice in ABA is a complex decision-making process involving frequent adjustments in goals and procedures as informed by science, client need, and clinical wisdom. Consistent with the science's foundations, incredible gains are possible for children with autism when practitioners are systematically trained to understand, produce, and be responsive to shifting conditions for change. However, minimal standards for training promote inflexibility and rule following, at the expense … more
This item is restricted from view until January 1, 2025.
Date: December 2022
Creator: Schleifer-Katz, Evan
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries

A Proposal for a Training Program to Support Culturally Responsive Professional-Family Interactions

Description: Behavior analysts often work with families from diverse cultural backgrounds. Ideally, behavior analysts and families interact in ways that are responsive to the family's culture and valued outcomes. The data indicate that most behavior analysts, however, come from one dominant cultural group. This is a proposal for training program and evaluation method to support culturally responsive professional-family interactions. This proposed study is designed to be conducted via Zoom-- a cloud-based vi… more
Date: December 2021
Creator: Anegbeh, Cynthia Momoh
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

A Preliminary Analysis of the Effects of a Training Program to Teach Skilled Dialogue to a Behavior Analyst Working in a Culturally Diverse Setting

Description: Diversity can serve as both a unifying force as well as grounds for intolerance of differences. Behavior analysts working in applied settings often encounter diversity and it is in these settings that meaningful relationships and harmonious collaboration are vital. Skilled dialogue has been recommended as an approach to capitalizing on diverse perspectives so that new solutions and meaningful relationships are developed. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effects of a training… more
Date: December 2021
Creator: Reese, Ashlee Keisha-Nikol
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

A Behavior Analytic Account of Humor Responses: Taking a Joke Way Too Seriously

Description: Compared to other examples of human behavior, humor responses have received relatively little attention from the scientific community and by the behavior analytic community in particular. This study investigated what some of the controlling variables for humans to emit a humor response may be. Participants were randomly presented two types of word sequences/jokes: one with a matching punchline and one without a matching punchline. Participants rated whether the jokes were funny or not funny, an… more
Date: December 2021
Creator: Amezquita IV, Edward Brandon
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Correspondence between Receptive and Expressive Task Performances: A Further Analysis of Necessary Conditions

Description: This study was a replication and an extension of the 2021 research performed by Spurgin and Borquez on the correspondence between receptive and expressive behavior. Spurgin examined the role of the echoic in a hear-say procedure with adult learners, while Borquez examined the role of the echoic in both hear-say and see-say procedures. Both studies found that receptive and expressive correspondence did not occur consistently across participants. The present study asked if the fading steps used d… more
Date: December 2021
Creator: Nachawati, Noor
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries

The Effects of a Contingent S-Delta

Description: This thesis attempted a cross-species replication of Bland, et. al., 2018. Human participants went through a computerized, automated shaping procedure that trained them to click on and discriminate between a blue square (SD) and red square (S-delta) on a VR 12 schedule of reinforcement. Three conditions were then presented to the participants consisting of a baseline, punishment, and control condition. In the punishment and control conditions, the SD was replaced by the S-delta or a novel stimu… more
Date: December 2021
Creator: Ochoa, Jules A
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Comparing a Hear-Say and See-Say Teaching Procedures during Verbal Behavior Instruction

Description: Establishing effective language intervention for those who struggle to acquire it early on has received significant attention from researchers within the field of behavior analysis. The procedures of the present study were adapted from Spurgin' thesis research from 2021, in which a stimulus specific consequence was used during teaching after participants made correct responses. In this case, the stimulus specific consequence was a label for a picture that participants were required to point to … more
Date: December 2021
Creator: Borquez, Nicholas Paul
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Influences of a Topographically and Functionally Unrelated Operant on Response Allocation under Concurrent Continuous Reinforcement Schedules

Description: In the experimental analysis of behavior, response allocation is typically studied under concurrent interval schedules, with two response alternatives, in a static environment. The natural environment of the unfettered organism, however, is dynamic insofar as even frequently visited environments are rarely identical from encounter to encounter. Additionally, natural environments usually offer more than two concurrently available behaviors that are often scheduled for reinforcement contingent on… more
Date: December 2020
Creator: Davidson, Alex J
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Evaluating Variables that Influence Research Staff Performance

Description: Performance analysis, based on operant analysis of behavior, has been utilized since the 1960s to investigate behavioral skills or deficits in the workplace. One type of analytical tool is Carr et al.'s Performance Diagnostic Checklist- Human Services (PDC-HS). This functional assessment allows investigators to pinpoint causes of performance issues (e.g., a training issue, task clarification/prompting, insufficient resources/materials/processes, or performance consequences/effort/competition). … more
Date: December 2020
Creator: Rodriguez, Ana
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Development and Disruption of Collateral Behavior and DRL Performances: A PORTL Exploration

Description: One schedule of reinforcement that is used to decrease the rate of a target behavior is differential reinforcement of low rates (DRL). During this schedule, reinforcement is delivered for a target response if it occurs after a certain amount of time has passed since the last instance of this target response. The current study used a table-top game called PORTL and college student participants to investigate how collateral patterns develop and are disrupted during DRL schedules. After the partic… more
Date: December 2020
Creator: Herzog, Leah
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Selecting Variability in Interlocking Behavioral Contingencies

Description: The current study explored how the variability or lack thereof in interlocking behavioral contingencies (IBC) may be brought under contextual control. Four undergraduates (two dyads) students participated in the current study. Dyads were instructed to play a game on a computer screen with the goal to earn as many "Congratulations" as possible. An ABABAB reversal design was used. A Lag 1 schedule of cultural consequence delivery for IBC topography was set in the variability (VAR) condition. Duri… more
Date: December 2020
Creator: Urbina, Tomas, III
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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