Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1966. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2006. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 93 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 53-58).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Individuals with developmental disabilities often have limited verbal repertoires and may engage in maladaptive behaviors in lieu of appropriate behaviors to access preferred stimuli. Functional Communication Training (FCT), although an efficacious treatment to reduce occurrences of maladaptive behavior, may result in unmanageable rates of the communicative response. Research has shown that gradually introducing a multiple schedule of reinforcement can ameliorate these high rates. To date, no studies have attempted the gradual introduction of a multiple schedule with behavior sensitive to negative reinforcement. Moreover, although evidence exists in the basic literature for the use of auditory stimuli as discriminative stimuli for the components of a multiple schedule, there is a paucity of applied research on multiple schedules with auditory signals. In the current study, two participants with developmental disabilities and intact vision and hearing received FCT to teach a functionally communicative response (e.g., touching a "break" card). Once the participants acquired the response, they were exposed to a multiple schedule condition, in which either auditory or visual signals were arranged to signal the components, and a mixed schedule (control) condition in which neither component was signaled

No description available.

This study examined response persistence during extinction following the delivery of quantity- or time-based reinforcers. Three typically developing preschool students participated in the study. In Experiment 1, equally preferred quantity-based and time-based reinforcers were identified for each participant. In Experiment 2, response persistence was evaluated during extinction following a period of reinforcement using equivalent variable interval schedules assigned to each reinforcement type. The results of this research further support the finding that reinforcement rate is a predictor of persistence (Nevin, 1974). However, type of reinforcer (i.e., quantity-based or time-based) did not have a uniform effect on the persistence of responding once extinction was implemented.

This study evaluated the effects differential reinforcement of alternative behavior on response persistence. A total of four participants from a local 2nd grade classroom participated in this study. A two component multiple schedule that included baseline (i.e., reinforcement of a target response) and DRA (i.e., reinforcement of an alternative response and reinforcement of the target response) conditions was conducted. Attempts were made to keep rates of reinforcement as similar as possible across components. Extinction was then implemented in the context associated with each component, and response persistence was measured. Results indicated three distinct patterns of responding: 1) alternative behavior was never emitted during the DRA component (two participants), 2) only the alternative behavior was emitted during the DRA component (one participant), and 3) both the target and the alternative behaviors were emitted during the DRA component (one participant). Overall, the results of this study indicated that DRA could result in inadvertent strengthening of target behavior. However, that strengthening may be mitigated if reinforcer rates are similar.

Few researchers have compared preference for reinforcement and response cost within a token economy, and the results have shown that preference varies among individuals (e.g., Donaldson et al., 2014; Iwata & Bailey, 1974; Jowett Hirst et al., 2016). Preference for response cost is an interesting phenomenon because response cost is a punishment procedure and is often considered aversive. Therefore, identifying the variables that influence preference for response cost is an important area of research. Some authors have suggested that the immediate delivery or presence of tokens might influence preference for response cost, but these variables have yet to be experimentally evaluated. The current study evaluated whether the presence of tokens influences selection of response cost over reinforcement in three typically developing preschool children by systematically varying the presence of tokens across both the reinforcement and response cost procedures. Results suggest that the presence of tokens influenced selection for one out of three participants. Implications of the results are discussed in terms of clinical application and directions for future research.

No description available.

The present study examined the following two hypotheses: (a) shock which has been associated with food will reduce responding less than shock which has not been associated with food: (b) response-contingent shock will reduce responding more than response-noncontingent shock. Response rates and the number of reinforcements received in Punishment training, and response rates in Punishment-Extinction training were examined for the following five groups: (a) shock and pellet for the same response (Pun-Rft Group): (b) shock and food for different responses (Pun Group): (c) response-noncontingent shock delivered automatically as response-contingent food becomes available for the next response (Shock-SD Group): (d) response-noncontingent shock delivered automatically independent of the availability of reinforcement (NC-Shock Group): (e) no shock (Control Group). The results indicated that (a) response-contingent and response-noncontingent shock reduced responding equally in Punishment training, and that (b) following Punishment-training, response-contingent shock reduced responding in Punishment-Extinction training whereas response-noncontingent shock had no effect on rate of responding in Punishment-Extinction training. The results also indicated that shock which had been associated with food had the same overall effect on response rates as shock which had not been associated with food. The relevance of these results to the discriminative and conditioned reinforcing functions of shock was discussed. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate