No description available.

In general terms a mand is a requesting response. Typically, children learn basic mands (e.g., “I want drink”) before learning to mand for information. Across three experiments I taught children with autism to mand for information using the mands “What is it?,” “Where?,” and/or “Which?”. In Experiment 1, a modified multiple-baseline design across situations was used to evaluate a teaching procedure that consisted of contrived motivating operations, prompt fading and prompt delay, natural consequences, error correction, and a brief preference assessment for teaching “What is it?” The results demonstrated strong internal validity with each of the three participants, with each showing generalization to situations, activities, scripts, the natural environment, and over time. In Experiment 2, a modified multiple-baseline design across three participants was used to evaluate approximately the same teaching procedure for teaching “Where?” The results demonstrated strong internal validity with each of the three participants, with generalization by all three participants to novel situations, activities, location the natural environment, and over time. In Experiment 3, a modified multiple-baseline design across three participants was used to evaluate approximately the same teaching procedure for teaching “Which?” The results demonstrated strong internal validity with generalization by all three participants to novel situations, activities, scripts, the natural environment, and over time. These findings are discussed in terms of its contributions to applied behaviour analysis research on teaching mand to children with autism.

No description available.

In general terms a mand is a requesting response. Typically, children learn basic mands (e.g., “I want drink”) before learning to mand for information. Across three experiments I taught children with autism to mand for information using the mands “What is it?,” “Where?,” and/or “Which?”. In Experiment 1, a modified multiple-baseline design across situations was used to evaluate a teaching procedure that consisted of contrived motivating operations, prompt fading and prompt delay, natural consequences, error correction, and a brief preference assessment for teaching “What is it?” The results demonstrated strong internal validity with each of the three participants, with each showing generalization to situations, activities, scripts, the natural environment, and over time. In Experiment 2, a modified multiple-baseline design across three participants was used to evaluate approximately the same teaching procedure for teaching “Where?” The results demonstrated strong internal validity with each of the three participants, with generalization by all three participants to novel situations, activities, location the natural environment, and over time. In Experiment 3, a modified multiple-baseline design across three participants was used to evaluate approximately the same teaching procedure for teaching “Which?” The results demonstrated strong internal validity with generalization by all three participants to novel situations, activities, scripts, the natural environment, and over time. These findings are discussed in terms of its contributions to applied behaviour analysis research on teaching mand to children with autism.

Autism prevalence has dramatically increased over the last 10 years, currently affecting 1 in 88 individuals. Individuals with autism face impairments in communication, with one-third to one-half of children with autism not developing natural speech and remaining non-verbal. Individuals with autism are increasingly being integrated into the educational system, within general and self-contained classrooms. A lack of research is apparent regarding the communicative techniques of individuals with non-verbal autism; thus, posing the question: how do children with non-verbal autism communicate? This study set out to examine the communicative techniques of five individuals with non-verbal autism, in their self-contained classrooms. Participants were videotaped during three or four observational periods. Videotaped observations were analyzed using the Modified-Classroom Observation for Measuring Intentional Communication tool (M-COSMIC), which identified the communicative partner, function, role, and form used by each participant. Results showed that all participants shared the same main communicative partner: an educational assistant; and the communicative forms of eye contact and action. Differences amongst participants appeared in the utilization of communicative categories. Three participants utilized functions from the behaviour regulation category; the remaining two participants communicated using functions from the dyadic social interaction and joint attention categories. The results of this study indicate that classroom professionals may need increased education regarding main communication techniques and communicative complexity used by individuals with non-verbal autism. As well, this study shows a gap in collaboration between educational assistants and classroom teachers, with no recognition of examining communication holistically. These findings suggest the need for further open-ended research allowing for the inclusion of all communicative forms, and accounting for the extensive factors impacting communication competence. / Graduate / 0515 / 0621

This research investigated two aspects of intuition: preference and process. The underlying basis of preference for intuition defined by Jung in his theory of psychological types and measured by the sensing-intuition (SN) scale of the Myers- Briggs Type Indicator was explored in two areas: performance on ability tests and individual differences in use of intuition. Process of intuition is defined as the use of unconscious associations to guide decision making. A thinking aloud protocol technique was used to investigate differences in strategy between sensing and intuitive types on two ability tests. Test instructions and conditions were varied to investigate whether preference or ability underlies this difference. Results indicated that the SN difference is best characterised as a focus on different types of information - concrete reality vs. looking beyond reality to patterns, connections and possibilities. The finding that sensing types could modify their style suggested that this is due to a personality preference that can be overridden rather than an underlying ability difference. The nature of the SN difference was further explored by examining the differences predicted by type theory between the types in the use of intuition. This prediction contrasts with some process theories of intuition which expect few or no individual differences. Results indicated that intuitive types were more accurate and more likely to choose to use intuition than sensing types. Results suggested that preference for different types of information led to use of different strategies on the tasks. Intuitive types tended to focus on feelings of familiarity, which resulted in their accessing intuition in the form of unconsciously learnt associations. Sensing types preferred to focus on concrete information such as conscious memory of prior experience. The research has made contributions by evaluating the theory of psychological types, validating the sensing-intuition scale, and also by demonstrating the existence of individual differences in certain measures of intuition.

Theories of human reasoning have tended to assume cognitive universality, i.e. that all individuals reason in basically the same way. However, some research (e.g. that of Ford. 1995) has found evidence of individual differences in the strategies people use for syllogistic reasoning. This thesis presents a series of experiments which aimed to identify individual differences in strategies for human reasoning and investigate their nature and aetiology. Experiment 1 successfully replicated and extended Ford (1995) and provided further evidence that most individuals prefer to reason with either verbal-propositional or visuo-spatial representations. Data from verbal and written protocols showed that verbal reasoners tended to use a method of substitution whereby they obtain a value for the common term from one premise and then simply substitute it in the other premise to obtain a conclusion. Spatial reasoners, on the other hand, presented protocols which resembled Euler circles and described the syllogistic premises in terms of sets and subsets. Experiment 2 provided some further qualitative evidence about the nature of such strategies, especially the verbal reasoners, showing that within strategy variations occurred. Experiment 3 extended this line of research, identifying a strong association between verbal and spatial strategies for syllogistic reasoning and abstract and concrete strategies for transitive inference (the latter having originally been identified by Egan and Grimes- Farrow, 1982). Experiments 1-3 also showed that inter-strategic differences in accuracy are generally not observed, hence, reasoners present an outward appearance of ubiquity despite underlying differences in reasoning processes. Experiments 5 and 6 investigated individual differences in cognitive factors which may underpin strategy preference. Whilst no apparent effects of verbal and spatial ability or cognitive style were found, reasoners did appear to draw differentially on the verbal and spatial components of working memory. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that whilst verbal reasoners draw primarily on the verbal memory resource, spatial reasoners draw both on this and on spatial resource. Overall, these findings have important implications for theories of human reasoning, which need to take into account possible individual differences in strategies if they are to present a truly comprehensive account of how people reason.

No description available.

The current study was designed to investigate the effect of concussion on verbal learning and memory performance in youth hockey players. Concussed participants completed the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) prior to the start of the hockey season. Following recovery from concussion, six males (10-12 years), with one sustaining two concussions, completed a follow-up assessment. A difference score was calculated for five RAVLT index scores. Each instance of concussion was matched to two controls on age, gender, and testing protocol in order to control for the confounding influences of repeated testing sessions. Independent-samples t-tests revealed a trend towards a significant decrease in change scores for the concussed participants on the Delayed Recall Trial of the RAVLT. These results suggest that long-term verbal memory may be negatively affected by concussion; however, future studies are needed with larger sample sizes and additional follow-up points in order to better understand the impact.

The current study was designed to investigate the effect of concussion on verbal learning and memory performance in youth hockey players. Concussed participants completed the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) prior to the start of the hockey season. Following recovery from concussion, six males (10-12 years), with one sustaining two concussions, completed a follow-up assessment. A difference score was calculated for five RAVLT index scores. Each instance of concussion was matched to two controls on age, gender, and testing protocol in order to control for the confounding influences of repeated testing sessions. Independent-samples t-tests revealed a trend towards a significant decrease in change scores for the concussed participants on the Delayed Recall Trial of the RAVLT. These results suggest that long-term verbal memory may be negatively affected by concussion; however, future studies are needed with larger sample sizes and additional follow-up points in order to better understand the impact.