The purpose of the study was to design and validate an instrument designed to investigate teachers' attitudes in regard to adolescent sexuality education. Test development adhered to the guidelines of Aligna and Crocker. Cronbach alpha was performed on the entire instrument and determined the reliability to be .8003, thus the instrument was consistent in measuring the domain areas. A panel of experts assessed content validity of items. A principal component factor analysis and a Pearson's product moment correlation were used for construct validity. Teacher concerns about curriculum implementation, teacher comfort with the subject matter, course-specific teacher attitudes, teacher interest about curriculum content, and teacher attitudes toward sexuality were found to be the constructs of the TACTS.

O presente experimento teve como objetivo replicar o estudo de Finn, Miguel e Ahearn (2012), manipulando a presença do quadro autoclítico de mandos e tatos e avaliar o efeito do treino de mandos e tatos de peças de duas tarefas de construção na emergência de tatos e mandos (não treinados) destas peças. Quatro participantes eram ensinados a montar duas tarefas de construção e, em seguida, a emitirem respostas vocais (pseudopalavras) com funções de tatos e mandos. Um contrabalanceamento foi aplicado para que cada participante iniciasse a fase de treinos com o treino de um operante verbal diferente (tatos ou mandos) das peças de uma Tarefa de Construção diferente (Tarefa de Construção 1 ou Tarefa de Construção 2), os participantes, então, passavam pela fase de teste dos dois operantes verbais para todas as peças das duas tarefas de construção. Após essa fase, os participantes passavam por mais uma fase de treino, do outro operante verbal diferente da primeira fase, para a outra tarefa de construção e, então, mandos e tatos eram testados para todas as peças das duas tarefas de construção. Todos os participantes emitiram tatos após o treino de mandos e apenas um participante (P3) não emitiu mandos após o treino de tatos para as peças das tarefas de construção. A emergência dos operantes verbais não treinados aconteceu em menores taxas do que as observadas nos achados de Finn et al (2012), demonstrando influência da ausência dos quadros autoclíticos nos treinos e testes de mandos e tatos. O segundo treino teve influência nos resultados dos testes da primeira tarefa de construção para os participantes P2 e P5, o que indica que a história de reforçamento de diferentes operantes verbais em condições semelhantes às das fases de teste podem favorecer a emergência de operantes verbais / The present experiment aimed to replicate the study by Finn, Miguel and Ahearn (2012), manipulating the presence of the autoclitic frame of mands and tacts and evaluating the effect of the training of mands and tacts of pieces of two construction tasks in the emergence of untrained mands and tacts of these pieces. Four participants were taught to set up two construction tasks and then to emit vocal responses (pseudowords) with mands and tacts functions. A counterbalance was applied so that each participant started the training phase with the training of a different verbal operant (mand or tact) of the parts of a different Construction Task (Construction Task 1 or Construction Task 2), the participants, then, went through the testing phase of the two verbal operants for all the pieces of the two construction tasks. Afterwards, the participants went through another training phase, from the other verbal operant, to the other construction task, and then mands and tacts were tested for all the pieces of the two construction tasks. All participants emitted tacts after the mand training and only one participant (P3) did not emit mands after the training of tacts for the pieces of the construction tasks. The emergence of the untrained verbal operants occurred at lower rates than those observed in Finn et al (2012), demonstrating the influence of the absence of autoclitic frames on mands and tacts training and tests. The second training had influence on the results of the tests of the first construction task for the participants P2 and P5, which indicates that the history of reinforcement of different verbal operants in conditions similar to those of the test phases can favor the emergence of verbal operants

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder that limits one’s ability to engage in a mutual, social interaction. Joint attention, imitation and social involvement are social abilities together with other cognitive functions that determine speechdevelopment. These abilities can be less developed in children with ASD compared to typically developing children and therefore children with ASD may have difficulties acquiring various social skills. Applied behaviour analysis (ABA) is a science which can be used to train language skills, for instance, the ability to request (mand) something or to label (tact) something. The purpose of this study was to investigate if the ability to mand and tact increased after intensive training. Three children participated in this study, where the amount of mands and tacts were calculated before training and 7–9 weeks after training had begun. The results confirmed that communicative initiatives increased among all participants. It is not possible to exclude that other factors may have affected the outcome, such as the learning effect of the experimenters or the maturation of the children during the course of this study. The results have not been significantly tested and therefore cannot be generalized to the population. More research is needed within the area. / Autismspektrumtillstånd (AST) är en funktionsnedsättning som begränsar bland annat förmågan till ömsesidig social interaktion. Delad uppmärksamhet, imitation och socialt engagemang är sociala förmågor som tillsammans med andra kognitiva förmågor ligger till grund för språkutvecklingen. Dessa förmågor kan vara mindre utvecklade hos barn med AST jämfört med typiskt utvecklade barn. Barn med AST kan således uppvisa svårigheter med att tillägna sig vissa språkliga förmågor. Tillämpad Beteendeanalys (TBA) är en vetenskap som kan användas för att träna språkliga färdigheter, bland annat förmågan att begära något (mand) och förmågan att benämna något (tact). Studiens syfte var att genom observation undersöka ifall förmågan att begära och benämna ökar efter intensiv beteendeanalytisk träning. Tre barn deltog i studien där antalet begära- och benämnatillfällen räknades innan påbörjad träning samt 7–9 veckor efter påbörjad träning. Resultatet visade att antal kommunikativa initiativ ökade hos samtliga deltagare. Det går inte att utesluta att andra faktorer kan ha påverkat resultatet, såsom inlärningseffekt hos testledarna eller mognad hos barnen under studiens gång. Resultaten har inte signifikansprövats och kan därmed ej generaliseras till populationsnivå. Mer forskning behövs inom området.

In Verbal Behavior, Skinner (1957) suggested that each verbal operant has independent response functions, in which acquiring one does not automatically result in the other, unless transfer between the verbal operants is directly trained. Although several researchers have shown that mands and tacts are functionally independent, more recent research has demonstrated that mands may emerge following tact training. However, this research has not clarified the influence of establishing operations on the emergence of pure mands following tact training. Therefore, the present study investigated the effects of tact training on the acquisition of impure and pure mands in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) when conditioned establishing operations (CEO) were manipulated during mand probes. Three children diagnosed with ASD were taught to tact the utensils needed to consume their preferred edibles and then were assessed on their ability to mand for those utensils during CEO absent versus CEO present pure mand probes using a multiple baseline design across participants. It was hypothesized that children would be able to mand for the missing utensils needed to consume their preferred edibles only when the food items were present (CEO present, pure mand probes), but not when they were absent (CEO absent, pure mand probes). Results showed that responses taught as tacts failed to transfer to mand responses until direct training was implemented for two of the three participants. However, once a mand response was learned, all participants exhibited the mand in the CEO present condition but not in the CEO absent condition.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T13:18:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Raquel Melo Golfeto.pdf: 4135779 bytes, checksum: 0f3803f9587a0cb972c2ff638f38f677 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005-06-02 / The tact is a verbal operant in which the response is emitted under control of an antecedent non-verbal stimulus and is maintained by generalized conditioned reinforcement. Technically, a verbal report and an explanation can be considered tacts. Among the tacts one emits, those in which the speaker behaves verbally under the control of another person s behavior (or his/her own behavior) are important. According to this point of view, mentalistic/internalistic descriptions or explanations of behavior would consist of verbal responses emitted under the control of relations in which variables assumed to occur inside the organism are interpreted as controlling this organism s responses. The emission of this type of verbal response (internalistic explanations) would be mainly evoked when the antecedent stimulation that controls the verbal behavior has certain features. The present study s goals were to verify: (1) if variations in the antecedent/consequent stimulation of an observed behavior would alter its explanation, (2) if changes in the explanation could be considered a product of changes in the controlling variables of the observed behavior, and (3) if explanations of human behavior would be mostly mentalistic. Six adults were instructed to explain the behavior of two individuals working at a computer, clicking a mouse. Each person was shown clicking the mouse in one of two different films, and the behavior of each person was under the control of a different schedule of reinforcement (MULT VR4/DRL10s and MIX VR4/DRL10s). The verbalizations/ explanations were classified and the moment of its occurrence was superimposed to a cumulative record of the behavior being explained.. The verbalizations were classified according to seven classes.. Three of them were labeled internalistic , three externalistic , and one was referred to as explanation of the observer s own behavior . The results show that the verbalizations in which the observers talked about their own behavior were the most frequent ones. The second most frequent category were internalistic verbalizations , which referred to a state or current condition of the person being observed. There was no significant difference (in number or type) between verbalizations emitted during the different films. This result was interpreted as showing that variables present only in the Multiple Schedule Film or exclusively in the Mixed Schedule Film were not responsible for the emission of verbalizations, either the non-internalistic or internalistic ones. The superimposition of the participants verbal responses on the the cumulative records of the clicking responses showed that for 4 of the 6 participants, the low occurrence of reinforcers and the low rate of clicking response seemed to control the emission of verbalizations, independently on the label they received. Finally, the terms that controlled the experimenters behavior of classifying verbalizations as internalistic were classified: the results showed that the terms that referred to cognitive processes or mood/internal states were the most frequent ones. Results are discussed considering possible controlling aspects of the film for the emission of explanatory verbal responses internalistic or not / O tato é o operante verbal no qual a resposta é emitida sob controle de um estímulo antecedente não verbal e mantida por reforço condicionado generalizado. Tecnicamente, relato verbal e explicação podem ser considerados tatos e entre os tatos que emitimos são importantes aqueles em que o falante responde verbalmente sob controle do comportamento de outro ou dele mesmo. Nessa perspectiva, descrições ou explicações mentalistas/internalistas do comportamento envolveriam respostas verbais sob controle de relações inferidas pelo tateador nas quais variáveis que supostamente ocorreriam dentro do organismo controlariam as respostas do organismo. A ocorrência desse tipo de resposta verbal (explicações internalistas) seria evocada especialmente quando a estimulação antecedente que controlaria o comportamento de explicar tivesse certas características. O presente estudo pretendeu verificar se: (1) mudanças na estimulação antecedente/conseqüente a um comportamento observado, alterariam as respostas verbais chamadas de explicação do comportamento, (2) alterações na explicação poderiam ser consideradas como produto das alterações das variáveis que controlam o comportamento observado e (3) se explicações do comportamento humano seriam predominantemente mentalistas. Participaram do estudo 6 adultos que receberam uma instrução para explicar o comportamento de clicar o mouse de 2 indivíduos mostrados em 2 diferentes filmes, cada um deles clicando o mouse sob controle de um esquema de reforçamento distinto (um múltiplo VR4/DRL10s e um misto VR4/DRL10s). As verbalizações foram classificadas e sobrepostas a um registro cumulativo do comportamento explicado. Foram propostas 7 classificações para as verbalizações . Três dessas classificações foram agrupadas como explicações 'internalistas' do comportamento observado, outras 3 foram classificadas como explicações 'externalistas' e 1 classificação foi referida como 'explicação do comportamento do próprio observador'. Os resultados mostraram a maior ocorrência para a classificação em que os observadores falavam do seu próprio comportamento. A segunda maior ocorrência de verbalizações foram aquelas classificadas como verbalizações internalistas que faziam referência a um estado ou condição momentânea do personagem observado . Não houve diferença significativa (no número ou tipo) de verbalizações emitidas nos diferentes filmes (que mostravam o clicar o mouse mantido por diferentes esquemas de reforço), sugerindo que as variáveis presentes somente no Filme Múltiplo ou no Filme Misto não foram responsáveis pela emissão de verbalizações predominantemente não-internalistas ou internalistas para a maior parte dos participantes. A distribuição das falas dos participantes no registro cumulativo dos filmes mostra que, para 4 dos 6 participantes, a presença de poucos reforçadores e a baixa taxa de respostas de clicar o mouse pareceram controlar a emissão de verbalizações, independentemente das classificações que elas receberam. Finalmente, os termos que serviram de base para a classificação das explicações como 'internalistas' foram reclassificados: os resultados mostraram que termos classificados como fazendo referência a processos cognitivos e ao humor/estado dos personagens foram os mais freqüentes. Os resultados são discutidos em termos de possíveis aspectos dos filmes que teriam controlado a emissão de respostas verbais de explicações - internalistas ou não

No description available.