Reinforcers were selected according to one of two procedures with six developmentally disabled students who displayed a variety of stereotypic behaviors. One selection procedure involved presenting a wide variety of stimuli to students and quantitatively measuring the impact of stimulus presentation upon behavior. The other procedure involved selecting reinforcers according to the best judgement of professionals familiar with individual students. It was hypothesized that reinforcers which were empirically-derived would result in more significant behavior changes than nonsystematically selected reinforcers. These hypotheses were subsequently tested in two experiments by using each group of reinforcers in a reinforcement-based paradigm, measuring subsequent behavior changes, and analyzing the degree to which differing amounts of behavior change occurred. An additional probe condition was included where novel stimuli were presented to students. Within-subject experimental designs were used to compare differences in observed amounts of targeted appropriate and inappropriate behaviors when different groups of reinforcers were used during class time. Results from Experiment 1 indicated that the use of empirically-derived reinforcers resulted in higher observed rates of appropriate behavior and correspondingly lower rates of inappropriate behavior than those selected according to professionals' best judgement or those which were novel to students. These findings are discussed in terms of the advantages of using objects as opposed to food as reinforcers. Experiment 2 was an attempt to replicate the findings in Experiment 1 using only objects which were selected according to one of the two procedures described in Experiment 1. Results indicated that more stable and lower overall rates of self-stimulation were observed when empirically-derived reinforcers were used. / These findings are discussed in terms of the relationship between the use of different types of object reinforcers and their effect upon the self-stimulatory behaviors. The advantages of empirically-based reinforcer assessment procedures are discussed and guidelines for their development are suggested. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 47-01, Section: B, page: 0373. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_75755 |
| Contributors | GALE, BRUCE MILES., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 147 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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