The objectives of the present dissertation were: (1) determine the relationships between time use in physical vs social leisure activities (PLA - SLA), and cognitive vs emotional leisure activities (CLA - ELA) by older adults age cohort (60-69, 70-79 and 80-plus yrs.); (2) ascertain the role of sex in moderating the relationship between time use in PLA-SLA and CLA-ELA by older adults age cohort; and (3) assess how employment status mediates the relationship between time use in PLA-SLA and CLA-ELA by older adults age cohort with moderation by sex. Secondary data was obtained from the 2019 American Time Use Survey database. Applying a cross-sectional design, data were analyzed using a linear regression model in SPSS version 27 and PROCESS Macro with Hayes Model 1 and 59. We identified the extent of the conditional indirect moderation effect of sex and the indirect employment status mediation effect moderated by sex in the relationship between PLA-SLA and CLA-ELA by older adult age cohorts. An index of moderated mediation was used to test the significance of each effect. The 80-plus yrs. cohort SLA time use was greater than in PLA across cohorts. Sex moderation showed a stronger effect in men by substantially decreasing their …

Effective and efficient skill-acquisition procedures must be identified to support individualized behavioral programming for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). To do this, practitioners and researchers may use assessment-based instruction. Prompts are a common teaching strategy to promote skill acquisition. The purpose of this applied study was to use assessment-based instruction to evaluate the efficacy and efficiency of within- and extra-stimulus prompts to teach conditional discriminations to two children with ASD. We identified stimulus prompts using a survey of popular children's games and conducted a tablet-based instruction readiness assessment. Stimulus prompts involved motion (within-stimulus) and pointing (extra-stimulus) to evoke correct responses in the presence of a discriminative stimulus. We used an adapted alternating treatments design with a no-treatment control condition to evaluate the effects of both prompt types across multiple sets of stimuli. Both stimulus prompt types were efficacious in facilitating skill acquisition for two of three participants. Little difference was observed in the time to mastery with either prompt. Neither stimulus prompt was efficacious for the third participant. Assessment results will be used to inform clinical programming to teach conditional discriminations to participants and contribute to research on designing and implementing assessments of skill-acquisition procedures.