UNT Theses and Dissertations - 391 Matching Results

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Can In-vivo Self-Monitoring Improve Discrete Trial Instruction Implementation?

Description: Beneficial consumer outcomes are most likely when behavior-analytic interventions are implemented with high procedural fidelity (i.e., degree to which the procedure is implemented as intended). Video self-monitoring, which involves teaching staff members to monitor their own procedural fidelity when watching recordings of themselves, can be used to improve and maintain high procedural fidelity, but video self-monitoring requires additional staff time and resources. In-vivo self-monitoring, whic… more
Date: July 2023
Creator: Lai, Rachel Nicole
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Effects of Prompts on Variability in Children with ASD

Description: The concept of "creativity" has been studied under the perspective of variability in behavior analysis. Creativity and variable responding contributes to problem solving in novel situations, learning new responses in different environments, and promote interactions that would otherwise be prohibited by repetitive behaviors and routines. During childhood, play contributes to the emergence of creativity and variability. Children develop many skills that are important to their lives while engaging… more
Date: July 2023
Creator: Yuen, Bonnie
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Effects of Skilled Dialogue Simulation Coaching on the Collaborative Verbal Behavior of Behavior Analysts in Training

Description: Despite the evidence that supports the benefits of a holistic, collaborative approach to autism intervention, but there is little training to teach those skills to professionals. Behavior analysts working in applied settings will often partner with different individuals from very different backgrounds and disciplines. Skilled Dialogue has been recommended as an approach to conversations that values everyone's contributions in fostering compassionate, collaborative, and culturally responsive car… more
Date: July 2023
Creator: Webb, Maia Grenada
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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A Multicomponent Evaluation of Food Properties Affecting Rumination in an Adult with Intellectual Disabilities

Description: Rumination consists of voluntary regurgitation of partially digested food, followed by chewing and re-swallowing or expulsion of regurgitated stomach contents (DM-ID2). Little research has systematically analyzed the differential effects of type or quantity of food on rumination across extended observations. This analysis demonstrated that certain (isolated) foods may differentially affect the rate of rumination. Furthermore, patterns of responding and manipulations of quantity may provide evid… more
Date: July 2023
Creator: Sanchez, Aaron Joseph
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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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
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Evaluating an Exchange Program for the Treatment of Problem Behavior Maintained by Access to Tangibles

Description: Previous studies, typically with children, have used delay-tolerance training to treat problem behavior maintained by access to tangibles. This often involves physical prompting and waiting rather than exchanging, two practices that may not be possible or relevant to adults with intellectual disabilities (ID). For many adults with ID in residential settings, exchanging items, rather than waiting per se, may be evocative for problem behavior. In the current study, I evaluated an exchange program… more
Date: May 2023
Creator: Bauer, Melanie Sue
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Faulty Stimulus Control and Reduced Treatment Integrity: An Analysis of Position Biases

Description: When learning conditional discriminations, it is possible that faulty sources of control develop and interfere with acquisition. In 2021, Bergmann et al. reported the effects of different integrity levels (i.e., to what degree an intervention is implemented correctly) on undergraduate students' mastery of an arbitrary matching to sample task. They found that participants in the reduced integrity conditions at or below 80% were more likely to show stimulus biases (i.e., selecting a particular i… more
Date: May 2023
Creator: Nielsen, Leif Erik
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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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.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Self-Governance in a CPR Game: An Empirical Assessment of Elinor Ostrom's Eight Design Principles

Description: Nobel laureate and economist Elinor Ostrom earned a Nobel prize in economic sciences in 2009 for her research on a community's ability to self-govern a common pool resource with the use of eight design principles. While Ostrom's accumulated efforts to analyze these principles and apply them to community resources have earned widespread recognition, these principles have yet to take off on a grand scale as a blueprint for self-governance systems globally. There is also a lack of empirical eviden… more
Date: May 2023
Creator: Smith, Alexandra Zachary
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

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
open access

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
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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
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

An Evaluation of Differential Attention on Preferred Topics of Conversation for Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Description: Extensive speech on preferred conversation topics may limit conversations with others. For individuals with ASD, extensive speech on a topic may be a form of restricted or repetitive behavior that may be addressed through skill building. However, previous research suggests that skill building may not be necessary if the behavior is sensitive to differential reinforcement contingencies. To evaluate the effects of differential reinforcement in the form of attention on conversation topics, we repl… more
Date: August 2022
Creator: Castillo, Michelle Victoria
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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