This study investigates the constructs of Derivation and Complexity and how they relate to latency. Derivation and Complexity are theoretical constructs that have been posited as two of the main factors in differences in latency to responding in implicit measures such as the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) and the Implicit Association Task (IAT). This study trained participants to relate two groups of novel stimuli in a linear fashion and then tested their latency to responding to derived relations (relations based on previously trained relations, but not directly trained themselves). The study then analyzed participant's latency to responding after dividing the responses based on derivation, complexity, and phase. The study found a significant relationship between phase and latency (p=.01), derivation and latency (p=.01), and complexity and latency (p=.04). This indicates that brief, immediate relational responses are influenced by both derivation and complexity as well as practice responding and these variables should be considered in future investigations into implicit attitudes.

Disparities in the use, quality, and outcomes of treatments, and the barriers that deter Hispanics from receiving healthcare services have been widely studied. Yet, similar efforts have been slow in the field of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). A way to decrease treatment disparities is to assess the influence of cultural variables in behavior analytic interventions, and to evaluate whether manipulations to these variables improve the overall results of the interventions among Hispanic families. During this study, we adapted functional communication training (FCT) to Hispanic parent’s cultural values, we assessed the preference for culturally adapted and non-culturally adapted functional communication responses (FCR), and we evaluated the social validity of both FCRs. We achieved this by creating the Culturally-Adapted Response Evaluation Survey (CARES) for behavior analysts to use as a guide when interviewing parents to identify an FCR that adheres to the families’ cultural values. We evaluated parents’ preference for each FCR using a multiple-baseline design in which parents were trained to implement procedures to maintain the FCR that was taught and we provided parents an opportunity to choose the FCR they wanted to reinforce. The results of the study and their implications for ABA services are discussed.

Behavioral Parent Training refers to a broad range of instructional programs that teach parents and other caregivers ways to build and change behavioral repertoires of children. Most, if not all, such programs employ Behavioral Skills Training (modeling, prompting, role-play practice and feedback) to teach parenting skills. However, specific ways to use prompting during role plays have not been described in the behavioral parent training literature. The present study compared two methods of conducting role plays during parent training. A between group, pretest/posttest design was used to evaluate and compare the effect of using one versus two trainers on the role-play performance of parents and other caregivers involved in the child dependency system. Although both groups' posttest scores improved, there was no statistically significant difference between the one and two trainer groups. It was determined that foster and adoptive parents performed better on posttest measures than did biological parents and relative caregivers, regardless of group assignment.

Human behavior analysis is an important challenge in many domains, such as surveillance systems, video content retrieval, human interactive systems, medical diagnosis, etc. With the increasing needs of public safety, intelligent surveillance system becomes an activating issue in computer vision and related research fields. In this thesis we present a method to analyze human behavior in a video sequence with depth information obtained from the depth camera. When interested actions are detected in the scene, the system will trigger alarm information. Contour line and Delaunay triangulation are used to establish human posture model. By traversing the triangulation meshes with the depth first search, we obtain the spanning tree with the depth information, and then construct human posture model with this spanning tree. Posture sequence from video sequence with corresponding posture models can be obtained, and then the posture sequences is clustered into key posture sequence. By querying the key posture sequence, the system can recognize human behavior in real-time and inform users immediately when interested actions detected. Experimental results show that the system is accurate and robust for human behavior recognition.

With the development of artificial intelligence , the application of recommender systems has been extended to fields such as e-commerce shopping cart analysis or video recommendation system. These systems provide user a recommended resource set based on their habits or behavior patterns to help users saving searching cost. However, these techniques have not been successfully adopted to help users search functions on smart-phones more efficiency. This research is designated to build the context-aware system, which can generate the list of operations predicting which function user might use under certain contexts through continuously learning users operation patterns and related device perceived scenario. The system utilize event-condition-action patterns to describe user frequent behaviors, and the research will focus on developing innovative Action-Condition-Fit algorithm to figure the similarity between action pattern sets and real-time scenario. Proposed system and algorithm will then be built on Google App Engine and Android device to empirically validate its performance through field test.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 49 pages. / Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: Much research has focused on the development of methods of measuring preference for stimuli. These methods have shown to be an accurate and valid way to identify potential reinforcers. However, these methods have only been conducted with tangible stimuli and have not been extended to non-tangible stimuli or activities, potentially because these types of stimuli are not appropriate for current preference assessment presentation methodologies. This study used a single stimulus presentation preference assessment to identify preferred activities for two adults with developmental disabilities. Two measures (duration of engagement and indices of happiness) were collected to identify preferred stimuli. For both participants, there were differences in happiness measure between activities. The engagement measure only produced differentiated results for one participant. / ABSTRACT: Reinforcer assessments were conducted to determine if the measures of preference were able to identify high preference stimuli that functioned as more effective reinforcers more than stimuli identified as low preference. Both participants exhibited high rates of an arbitrary response during all conditions of the reinforcer assessment. Therefore, the reinforcer assessments did not validate the results of the preference assessments. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 55 pages. / Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: Previous research has examined the effectiveness of placing parents on a variety of incentive programs which would increase their likeliness to participate in school related activities. That research suggested that establishing school as a reinforcing environment for parents was vital. Due to these findings, this study examined the effects of a token economy on parent involvement at a low-income elementary school. Teachers were trained in the data collection method, and parental behavior was observed on a daily, weekly and bi-weekly schedule. Measures of social validity were obtained through teacher and parent questionnaires. The data from the research study suggested that the implementation of the token economy did increase the amount of parent participation, but only on a "micro" level. Parent involvement on a larger scale such as participation in after school activities such as PTA's and other large scale school related activities were not affected. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 90 pages, / Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: English language learners are traditionally behind in academics such as reading, math and science. Hispanics, who make up the vast majority of English language learners, tend to not enroll in pre-school or higher education, have higher dropout rates and as adults earn less than whites. Common instructional strategies used in public schools are not meeting the needs of these students. The field of TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) has typically offered a wide variety of poorly defined teaching strategies that are not based on empirical research. Within public schools, assessment tends to serve the purpose of qualifying students for ESOL services rather than being used to guide instruction. / ABSTRACT: The present study examined using the Assessment of Basic Language and Learning Skills (ABLLS) with three English language learners in an elementary public school setting to discern its usefulness for teachers and students. Results showed that the ABLLS could be used for English language learners, and teachers generally liked the assessment information, although the current assessment may be too lengthy and time intensive to be practical for regular education settings. Also, it did not appear that reviewing the ABLLS assessment had much effect on teacher behavior in terms of changes in instructional strategies used for the three students, although teachers did indicate that they would target different skills as a result of viewing the assessment. Suggestions are made for developing a modified version of the ABLLS for use with English language learners. / ABSTRACT: Possible trends in student data are examined, as well as possible teaching strategies that may be suggested by the ABLLS. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Studies have shown that increasing eye contact can be accomplished by using reinforcement, prompting, shaping, functional movement training, punishment, and self-monitoring. However, there is a lack of research that evaluates the use of technology as a way to increase eye contact. This study tested the effectiveness of a tablet application at increasing eye contact in children diagnosed with autism. The application requires the child to look at a picture of a person's face and identify the number displayed in the person's eyes in order to receive reinforcement. Data was collected immediately after training, one hour after training, and in the natural environment. The tablet application was not effective at increasing eye contact for any of the three participants. Once the tablet application was shown to be ineffective, the researcher used differential reinforcement to increase eye contact. All three participants showed an increase in eye contact once the differential reinforcement training was implemented.

Research has investigated staff management procedures that produce treatment adherence and maintenance over time. Treatment integrity is one of the most important aspects of staff management; without adequate treatment adherence, behavior analysts are unable to determine whether treatment is effective, function has been identified, or intervention revisions are needed. The literature on staff management procedures has demonstrated that performance feedback and self-monitoring are effective procedures for increasing treatment integrity of behavior plans in the presence of the observer, however, few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of these procedures when the observer is absent. This study evaluated the effectiveness of performance feedback and self-monitoring procedures and the level of reactivity to the presence of an observer exhibited by staff trained to implement individualized behavior plans. The results showed that staff performance increased with the intervention almost exclusively in the conspicuous observation condition.