Autism is a neurological disorder which impairs the individual's social interactions and communication. Such impairments lead to deficits in learning which accumulate over time. Finding effective and efficient technologies to teach children with autism helps to minimize deficits and teach children new skills to be independent learners. There is previous research on technologies such as discrete trail training (DTT), antecedent based interventions, and consequence based interventions which have to be shown to be effective, however, more research is needed to find more cost effective and efficient procedures.. The PEAK Stimulus Equivalence Training Module seeks to teach children with Autism in a concise easy to follow manual. Past research has shown stimulus equivalence to not only effectively teach children with autism novel skills, but also has shown the emergence of untrained relations. The present study uses the PEAK module with three boys with autism, between the ages of 6 and 8, to teach novel stimuli including, planets, holidays, and sports teams and to test for the emergence of untrained relations. Results showed that the all participants demonstrated derived relations. Implications for future research are discussed.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) language repertoire development varies greatly amongst each individual especially in one’s ability to understand emotions. One way to increase language development and further understand emotions is through stimulus equivalence. Theis present study examined the effefficacy of a stimulus equivalence training procedure in bringing the recognition of others’ emotions under multiple contextual control, and also evaluated co-occurring changes in the flexibility of participant responses to common questions requiring emotional recognition that is multiply controlled. The procedures were taken from the Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge Equivalence Module (PEAK-E) to aid in replication both clinically and in research. The results suggest that each of the three participants, all with an autism diagnosis, were able to identify the facial expressions of others when provided with a person and a context (i.e., What face does Person A feel at Location B?). In addition, two of the three participants were able to correctly identify an individual when provided with a context and an emotion (i.e., Who feels Emotion A at Location C?). Results from the flexibility probes throughout the study however indicate that the participants did not demonstrate an increase vin flexible responding following equivalence training. ectiveness of stimulus equivalence under multiple control to promote the emergence of an untrained relation via the PEAK – E Curriculum: Feelings in Context. Three participants diagnosed with autism, between the ages 12 and 17, were directly trained nine relations that established under a specific context a person will make a certain facial expression. Results indicate that all three participants demonstrated mastery in the training condition; however, when tested for equivalence only two of three participants were able to do so.

Two adults with intellectual disabilities were taught practical money skills within a stimulus equivalence training procedure taken from the PEAK equivalence relational training system. The participants were taught to accurately count and select combinations of money of five different values, in the presence of an object worth a specific value and combinations of coins worth the same value. The results of this study found that the PEAK program 12L: Monetary Exchange was successful in training two adults with intellectual disabilities and other co-occurring disorders how to accurately count five values as well as derive relations between two values and an object. The first participant mastered two complete levels of stimuli whereas the second participant mastered on complete level of stimuli before training was terminated due to behavioral variables.

This investigation assessed the utility of a selection-based instructional program in teaching relations between driving behavior and driving stimuli in addition to the emergence of topography-based responding. A selection-based instructional program was delivered to three individuals with intellectual disabilities and/or learning disabilities in order to teach participants relations of sameness between automobile operation stimuli and driving behaviors. Participants were directly taught relations between video models of vehicle operation, road sign outlines, and textual stimuli of road signs using a selection-based instructional protocol delivered via a computer program. Following mastery of the selection-based instruction the emergence of selection-based responding on symmetrical and transitive posttest probes at the mastery level was observed for all 3 participants. Furthermore, movement on posttest generalization vehicle simulator probe was observed for one participant.

The late1980s, early 1990s was a time of change in the Swedish education system. New political reforms changed the Swedish living and school standards. The outcome of the reforms were decentralization, parents’ right to choose school and independent schools. The reforms opened up for a more local influence in schools, and paretns right to choose school and education of their own intreset. The focus of this essay is the concept of decentralization and equivalence and how it has changed and formed todays ementary school. This is a literary study about changes in the Swedish education system founded on studie reports and political reforms. The outcome of this study shows a change in the Swedish school, whitch has segregated both schools and students in a more homogeneously way, and the equality  has deteriorated.

This study explored statistical equivalence of the adapted Xhosa and English version of the Woodcock-Muñoz Language Survey (WMLS) by investigating group differences on each subscale, in terms of mean scores, index reliability, and item characteristics for two language groups. A Convenience quota sampling technique was used to select 188 Xhosa (n = 188) and 198 English (n = 198) learners from Grades 6 and 7 living in rural and urban Eastern Cape. The WMLS Xhosa and English versions were administered to learners in their first languages. Significant mean group differences were found, but differences were not found on the reliability indices, or mean item characteristics. This pointed in the direction of statistical equivalence. However, scrutiny of the item characteristics of the individual items per subscale indicated possible problems at an item level that need to be investigated further with differential functioning analyses. Thus, stringent DIF analyses were suggested for future research on DIF items before the versions of the WMLS can be considered as equivalent.

Psychologists interested in the study of language find that people are faster at making decisions about words that are related than they are at making decisions about words that are not related – an effect called semantic priming. This phenomenon has largely only been document in laboratory settings using natural languages as contest and real words as stimuli. The current study explores the relation between the semantic priming effect and a laboratory procedure designed to give rise to performances that can be described as linguistic. Six adult participants learned to partition a collection of eight stimuli into two sets of four stimuli. Following this, the subjects showed the semantic priming effect within a set of stimuli but not across sets. These data suggest that it may be possible to study linguistic phenomenon in laboratory-based procedures allowing better control and the ability to ask very precise questions about linguistic functioning.

In recent years, the development of follow-on biological products (biosimilars) has received increasing attention. The dissertation covers statistical methods related to three topics of Non-inferiority (NI), Bioequivalence (BE) and Equivalence in demonstrating biosimilarity. For NI, one of the key requirements is constancy assumption, that is, the effect of reference treatment is the same in current NI trials as in historical superiority trials. However if a covariate interacts with the treatment arms, then changes in distribution of this covariate will result in violation of constancy assumption. We propose a modified covariate-adjustment fixed margin method, and recommend it based on its performance characteristics in comparison with other methods. Topic two is related to BE inference for log-normal distributed data. Two drugs are bioequivalent if the difference of a pharmacokinetics (PK) parameter of two products falls within prespecified margins. In the presence of unspecified variances, existing methods like two one-sided tests and Bayesian analysis in BE setting limit our knowledge on the extent that inference of BE is affected by the variability of the PK parameter. We propose a likelihood approach that retains the unspecified variances in the model and partitions the entire likelihood function into two components: F-statistic function for variances and t-statistic function for difference of PK parameter. The advantage of the proposed method over existing methods is it helps identify range of variances where BE is more likely to be achieved. In the third topic, we extend the proposed likelihood method for Equivalence inference, where data is often normal distributed. In this part, we demonstrate an additional advantage of the proposed method over current analysis methods such as likelihood ratio test and Bayesian analysis in Equivalence setting. The proposed likelihood method produces results that are same or comparable to current analysis methods in general case when model parameters are independent. However it yields better results in special cases when model parameters are dependent, for example the ratio of variances is directly proportional to the ratio of means. Our research results suggest the proposed likelihood method serves a better alternative than the current analysis methods to address BE/Equivalence inference.

This study evaluates the efficacy of using Equivalence Based Instruction (EBI) to teach historical figures to teenagers with autism in a group setting. Stimuli consisted of three eight-member classes of (A) vocal names of inventors, (B) pictures of inventors, and (C) textual names of their inventions. Participants were assigned their own directly trained class members (Participant 1- A₁₂₃₄, B₁₂₃₄ ,C₁₂₃₄) and (Participant 2 - A₅₆₇₈, B₅₆₇₈, C₅₆₇₈). Participants trained on relation A→B, then after mastery, trained on relation B→C. Probes were conducted followed both A→B and B→C training to assess mastery. Participants each received instructions for three trials then alternated as observer for three trials. Results found both participants demonstrated class formation on their trained stimuli, and one participant demonstrated class formation for his train and observed stimuli. This suggest observational learning with EBI was effective for teaching new academic skills to teenagers with autism.

The purpose of this current study was to evaluate the use of a stimulus equivalence paradigm to teach emerging adults with developmental disabilities to accurately estimate portion sizes. This study also aimed to integrate nutritionally recommended foods to incorporate a socially significant component to promote health related behaviors. Three emerging adults with various developmental disabilities participated in this study. A pre/post-test embedded in a multiple baseline design across food was used to demonstrate experimental control. Results of this study indicated that all participants exhibited accurate portion size estimations following stimulus equivalence direct training trials and test of untrained relations. When asked about their perceptions of the training methods through a social validity questionnaire participants indicated that this training method were effective and acceptable. Limitations and directions for further research are also discussed.