Thesis (Ed. D.)--Illinois State University, 1998. / Title from title page screen, viewed July 6, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Rodney Riegle (chair), Paul Baker, Kenneth Strand, Michael Reisen. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-100) and abstract. Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2001. / Title from title page screen, viewed March 21, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Elizabeth Lugg (chair), Paul Baker, Barbara Heyl, George A. Padavil. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-128) and abstract. Also available in print.

The problem of this study was to determine if educationally, politically, and economically viable alternatives to the single salary schedule for teachers exist in the eight largest school districts in Texas. After a review of the literature, a questionnaire was developed designed to obtain views of superintendents, school board members, randomly selected principals, teachers, and PTA members in the eight school districts on these issues: whether a multi-factor teacher salary schedule should be developed; which factors should be included in such a system; what amount of monetary compensation should be awarded for each factor; and if teacher job performance is a factor, what criteria should be used to evaluate teachers and who would conduct the evaluations. Analyses of the data were conducted according to the following demographic variables: school district; position, sex, and ethnicity of the respondents; whether the respondents owned homes in the school districts; and whether the respondents had children enrolled in the district schools. The results were presented for the respondents as a whole and according to the various demographic variables.

An n-armed bandit task was used to investigate the trade-off between exploratory (choosing lesser-known options) and exploitive (choosing options with the greatest probability of reinforcement) human choice in a trial-and-error learning problem. In Experiment 1 a different probability of reinforcement was assigned to each of 8 response options using random-ratios (RRs), and participants chose by clicking buttons in a circular display on a computer screen using a computer mouse. Relative frequency thresholds (ranging from .10 to 1.0) were randomly assigned to each participant and acted as task constraints limiting the proportion of total responses that could be attributed to any response option. Preference for the richer keys was shown, and those with greater constraints explored more and earned less reinforcement. Those with the highest constraints showed no preference, distributing their responses among the options with equal probability. In Experiment 2 the payoff probabilities changed partway through, for some the leanest options increased to richest, and for others the richest became leanest. When the RRs changed, the decrease participants with moderate and low constraints showed immediate increases in exploration and change in preference to the new richest keys, while increase participants showed no increase in exploration, and more gradual changes in preference. For Experiment 3 the constraint was held constant at .85, and the two richest options were decreased midway through the task by varying amounts (0 to .60). Decreases were detected early for participants in all but the smallest decrease conditions, and exploration increased.

This study attempts to improve the delivery of health services by applying operations research techniques to hospital admission systems. Although this study applies to hospital admissions systems in general, the admission system of one ward of one hospital was chosen to be the central object in the study. A computer simulation model was formulated to examine the -results of various policies. In the model, the admission of patients is determined primarily by the scheduling of the operating theatre and secondarily by the availability of beds. The three standard priorities for hospital admissions (elective, urgent and emergent) are given separate considerations as would be the case in real life; because scheduling can be much more flexible for elective patients, while time must be set aside for emergent patients although the hospital has no advance information about them. The general results of this study led to two suggestions that would improve most existing admission systems. The first requires that the hospital set up a special class of patients, the "quickcall patients," who would be willing to be admitted for surgery on short notice. It was shown that this procedure significantly reduced the waiting time for elective surgery. The second requires that the hospital limit each physician to a fixed number of requests for elective surgery at any given time, so that the hospital need not keep extensive files. The model could be extended to examine (1) the sensitivity of the schedule to referral patients, (2) the higher utilization of the operating theatre and (3) waiting priority based on patient need and/or utility. In conclusion the simulation study indicated that these policies if implemented would significantly reduce the waiting time (29% in the model), and increase the hospital's effectiveness in assessing the order of admission for patients. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

Autism Spectrum Disorder makes it difficult to for a child communicate, have social interactions and go through daily life. Visual cues are often used to help a child associate an image with an event. With technology becoming more and more advanced, we now have a way to remind a child of an event with wearable technology, such as a watch. This new technology can help a child directly with the Visual Scheduling Application and various other applications. These applications allow children and their families to be easily able to keep track of the events on their schedule and notify them when an event occurs. With the Autism Management Platform and related website, a parent can easily create events to help a child throughout the day. The child can associate an image with events, allowing for a clearer understanding of what to do when an event occurs. Wearable technology has become a new way to interact with the user in a very unobtrusive manner. With this new technology, we can help associate a visual event to a child’s schedule and interrupt when needed to help make the child’s life easier on a daily basis.

The role of operant behavior in the metabolism of brain 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) turnover was investigated. Two and one-half hours following the administration of 150 mg/kg of para-chlorophenylalanine (PCPA), a specific inhibitor of tryptophan hydroxylase, levels of 5-HT were compared in sedentary and performing rats. Whole brain levels of serotonin were reduced in both responding and sedentary animals; however, differences between these groups were not statistically significant. The drug induced decrease in 5-HT levels was accompanied by a significant decrease in session responding. The degree of suppressed responding could be correlated with the level of 5-HT following PCPA, suggesting that the metabolism of serotonin is in part modulated by the rate of responding as maintained by the operant schedule.

We manipulated delay and magnitude of reinforcers in two concurrent schedules of reinforcement to decrease a prevalent behavior while increasing another behavior already in the participant's repertoire. The first experiment manipulated delay, implementing a five second delay between the behavior and delivery of reinforcement for a behavior targeted for decrease while no delay was implemented after the behavior targeted for increase. The second experiment manipulated magnitude, providing one piece of food for the behavior targeted for decrease while two pieces of food were provided for the behavior targeted for increase. The experiments used an ABAB reversal design. Results suggest that behavior can be decreased without the use of extinction when contingencies favor the desirable behavior.

Research suggests teaching adults and children with disabilities to follow pictorial cues increases home life skills, vocational skills and on-task behavior. Activity schedules use pictorial cues to prompt individuals to complete behavioral sequences. The purpose of this study was to examine if, after training, adults with intellectual disabilities completed a series of behaviors using an activity schedule. The dependent variable is percent of components completed independently. Three individuals with mild to severe intellectual and physical disabilities receiving services from a private provider day program participated. Each participant used an activity schedule to complete a skill set during training. The results show that, for all participants, an activity schedule increased independently completed steps of the skill set, typing on a computer, as compared to when the activity schedule was not present.

We used a combined multi-element, ABCBC reversal design to examine whether qualities of various negative reinforcers can be assessed under progressive-ratio schedules. Two adults with disabilities participated in this study. We assessed five sounds three times using progressive-ratio schedules to obtain mean break points for each stimulus and ranked negative reinforcers according to their mean break points. We called the stimulus with the highest mean break point the high-quality escape (HQE) stimulus and the stimulus with the lowest break point the low-quality escape (LQE) stimulus and examined responding according to different schedules of reinforcement for each stimulus: FR2, FR4, and FR8 for Jenny and FR1 and FR11 for April. We identified preferred and nonpreferred sounds for both participants.We observed differential responding for both participants between preferred and nonpreferred sounds. We observed differential responding between HQE and LQE stimuli for April but not for Jenny; a larger range in break points was observed for April. These results demonstrate a method to identify preferred and nonpreferred sounds and provide support for the possibility of using progressive-ratio schedules to rank negative reinforcers of various qualities.