Creativity can be a useful skill in today's classrooms and workplaces. When individuals talk about creativity, it's unclear what the controlling variables are when we tact behavior as "creative." Research in understanding the processes behind behaviors that are considered "creative" would assist in identifying functional relations and provide insight on how to teach creativity. Since creativity is often described as doing something different from the norm, behavioral variability may be a potential aspect of creativity. This study aimed to replicate previous findings by investigating the effects of discrimination training in a multiple schedule of varied and repetitive responding in the context of a video game. Participants played through a 2D online video game made in Bloxels. Different alternating-colored platforms served as the discriminative stimuli for the vary and repeat components. Three parameters of variability were measured (e.g., left jumps, right jumps, and double jumps). The results of the study indicate that participants were able to learn the discrimination of when to repeat and vary their responses depending on which colored platform they encountered.

Previous studies, typically with children, have used delay-tolerance training to treat problem behavior maintained by access to tangibles. This often involves physical prompting and waiting rather than exchanging, two practices that may not be possible or relevant to adults with intellectual disabilities (ID). For many adults with ID in residential settings, exchanging items, rather than waiting per se, may be evocative for problem behavior. In the current study, I evaluated an exchange program to treat problem behavior maintained by access to tangibles for adults diagnosed with ID at a residential facility. I measured the latency to exchange low- and high-preference items following a request for the item and the individual's problem behaviors. Results demonstrated that the exchange program increased relinquishing of an item while decreasing the rate of problem behavior. This analysis provides another method to treat problem behavior maintained by access to tangibles for adults without using physical prompting.

In an organism's natural environment, there are always an uncountable number of stimuli, and stimulus features, available to gain control over behavior. When these component stimuli are presented simultaneously, this new stimulus compound can occasion a previously unseen effect on behavior. Stimulus compounding is a method used to better understand how variables in stimulus features may impact the final effect on an organism's responding when presented with a stimulus compound. While stimulus compounding experiments are often conducted using intermodal tone and light stimuli, it is conducted far less often using intramodal stimuli, potentially due to the competing stimulus features of same-modality stimuli. Even less conducted research has been done using two odor component stimuli, despite the large impact odor has on many species' behavior. The purpose of this study was to conduct a stimulus compounding experiment using intramodal ambient odor stimuli in rats, to see what kind of effect a mixed odor compound would have on the subject's behavior. This was done using a wind tunnel designed operant chamber, where both subjects were trained to respond to independently presented odor stimuli. Following training a compound mixture of both component odors was presented to the subjects. The results of this study …

When learning conditional discriminations, it is possible that faulty sources of control develop and interfere with acquisition. In 2021, Bergmann et al. reported the effects of different integrity levels (i.e., to what degree an intervention is implemented correctly) on undergraduate students' mastery of an arbitrary matching to sample task. They found that participants in the reduced integrity conditions at or below 80% were more likely to show stimulus biases (i.e., selecting a particular incorrect stimulus in the presence of a sample stimulus) than participants in integrity conditions at or above 85%. Bergmann et al. did not investigate whether participants were likely to show responding that was biased by position. A position bias is a type of faulty stimulus control that involves allocating more responses to one or a few positions (e.g., first, second, middle, left). We conducted a secondary analysis of data from Bergmann et al., and we used a chi-square goodness of fit test to identify which participants showed a position bias. We found 25 participants out of 168 with potential position biases. We used a chi-square test of independence to analyze the distribution of participants with biased responding by condition and did not find a statistically significant difference. …

Nobel laureate and economist Elinor Ostrom earned a Nobel prize in economic sciences in 2009 for her research on a community's ability to self-govern a common pool resource with the use of eight design principles. While Ostrom's accumulated efforts to analyze these principles and apply them to community resources have earned widespread recognition, these principles have yet to take off on a grand scale as a blueprint for self-governance systems globally. There is also a lack of empirical evidence that supports these principles as empirical investigations have yet to manipulate the principles individually or as an intervention package as independent variables. The purpose of the present study is to empirically test Ostrom's eight design principles in a tabletop game model of a community utilizing a common pool resource (CPR) by implementing as well as removing the principles within an adapted version of the board game Catan. In three groups, the CPR almost always fully crashed in baseline but not when Ostrom's principles were in place as game rules. Results indicated that Ostrom's design principles may organize participant responses and maintain resource levels over time more effectively than without Ostrom's rules applied.

Naming refers to encountering a new word and subsequently being able to use it both expressively and receptively. Sometimes, this can happen in as little as a single experience. Several recent studies have explored factors that influence the acquisition of naming in adults. However, these studies used familiar stimuli for which the participants already had names. In these studies, preexisting stimulus-response relations with the stimuli could have impeded the acquisition of new names for some participants. In contrast, the present study used unfamiliar ("arbitrary") stimuli. In addition, an equivalence test was used to validate the findings because some theorists have claimed that naming is required for equivalence. The results revealed some advantages to teaching naming with arbitrary stimuli. Interestingly, a subset of participants had high scores on equivalence tests without having high scores on expressive tests. This indicates that, contrary to naming theory, naming may not be necessary for equivalence and match-to-sample tests may not be the best test of equivalence. These findings support the independence of the expressive and receptive repertoires both in the development of naming and equivalence.

Interobserver agreement (IOA) was calculated across three participant dyads for a generalized treatment integrity tool. No dyads achieved 80% agreement during baseline. Task clarification was piloted as an intervention for two of the three dyads. Form agreement produced stabilization in both dyads and improvement in one dyad. Time agreement did not improve but demonstrated marked trends in one dyad.

Percentile reinforcement schedules have been used to systematically alter inter-response times, behavioral variability, breath carbon monoxide levels, duration of social behaviors, and various other properties of behavior. However, none of the previous studies have examined the effectiveness of percentile schedules in relation to the magnitude of muscular contractions. This control over magnitude of muscular responding has important implications relating to the strengthening of muscles and correct movements for patients receiving physical rehabilitation. There would be great utility in percentile schedules that can be implemented in rehabilitation situations by physical therapists and patients themselves to improve treatment outcomes – all of which could be possible without any behavioral training if the procedure is implemented via body sensors and smartphone applications. Using healthy adults and the aforementioned technology, this thesis focused on the design and testing of three percentile reinforcement schedule procedures to increase the strength of the vastus medialis muscle. Results indicate that the magnitude of muscular responses can be shaped using body sensors and contingent feedback, and the percentile schedule procedures have promising applications in the domain of physical therapy.

This study explored the effects of cultural consequences identified through a ranking task on the selection of interlocking behavioral contingencies and aggregate products constituting ethically self-controlled responses when participants had pre-existing relationships. Two experiments were conducted to explore these effects. Experiment 1 had two triads of three participants each recruited from a university-based autism center. Experiment 2 had three triads of three participants each; participants in Triads 3 and 4 were recruited from a university-based rock-climbing club while participants in Triad 5 were recruited from the same university-based autism center as in Experiment 1. All participants were exposed to a task that involved choosing odd or even rows from a matrix displayed throughout the experimental session. Individual contingencies were programmed in all conditions while metacontingencies were programmed in some conditions. Participants selected the topography of the cultural consequence through a pre-experimental ranking task prior to the onset of the experimental session. A change was made to the experimenter's verbal behavior in all operant and metacontingency conditions for Experiment 2. The results of both experiments indicate that identification of the cultural consequence through a ranking task with participants having pre-existing relationships did have an effect on the continued selection of the …

Most horse owners administer oral deworming medication to their horses on a set schedule, often six times per year. The deworming process involves using a plastic syringe to inject a thick paste into the horse's mouth. Most horse owners do not specifically train their horses to accept this procedure. Consequently, many horses resist the procedure and some horses engage in behaviors, such as head shaking, pulling away, or even rearing, that may be dangerous to humans or to themselves. This study used a negative reinforcement shaping procedure to train six horses to accept dewormer medication. The procedure consisted of a food sampling phase followed by three shaping phases that simulated the deworming task, first using only the experimenter's hand, then a small syringe, and finally a large syringe. Once the horse was acclimated to the syringe, the horse's preferred liquid food was delivered through the syringe at the end of each trial. By the end of the study, all participants successfully completed the procedure and were able to stand still with no or minimal head movements while being dewormed.

An important question in teaching language is, what accounts for the emergence of either receptive or expressive labels when teaching only one of them? The teaching procedures in the present study were intended to reproduce the natural development of bidirectional naming in which caregivers comment on the items a child is interacting with and children echo those vocalizations they hear. Thus, the only vocalizations presented by the researcher during teaching occurred after the learner pointed to a specific stimulus, and were specific to the stimulus being targeted. These vocalizations are referred to in this study as stimulus-specific consequences. The purpose of this research was to investigate if the stimulus-specific consequences could become discriminative stimuli for receptive labels, and lead to the emergence of expressive labels. Three studies were conducted, each with four adults. Results demonstrated that using a stimulus-specific consequence during teaching led to receptive labels for all participants, but led to the emergence of expressive labels for only four participants. In other words, bidirectional naming did not occur for the majority of participants. Factors that may improve interrelations between receptive and expressive labels were analyzed, but further evaluations are needed to account for the inconsistent demonstrations of naming.

The present study investigated how engaging in a behavior that is potentially incompatible with covert verbal behavior, singing aloud, affected the percent of correct responses and reaction time during equivalence tests as compared to engaging in a behavior considered compatible with covert verbal behavior, alternating foot tapping, during testing. Results varied between participants with some participants showing higher accuracies in the incompatible condition and some in the compatible condition. Performance in terms of accuracy and reaction time were correlated, with higher accuracies in the compatible condition being correlated with faster reaction times in the compatible condition. Limitations discussed include a low number of participants due to COVID-19, the covert nature of the behavior of interest, the length of time required to complete the experiment, and the challenges to monitoring the incompatible behavior due to social distancing requirements. Potential future research is discussed in light of these limitations.

Wii Fit U games utilize a Wii Balance Board™ (WBB) in a manner that can provide precise feedback contingencies similarly to some forms of balance rehabilitation, thereby potentially increasing the dose of quality therapy with or without the presence of a therapist during post-brain injury rehabilitation. Additionally, an engaging video-game could improve treatment adherence, a critical aspect of making positive functional gains, by potentially increasing the rate and quality of reinforcement embedded in therapy. The present study had three aims: (1) develop a rigorous behavioral therapy for improving balance in individuals living with chronic brain injury using a Wii Fit U game and the WBB; (2) evaluate the program's effects on balance measures using a within-subject experimental design; and (3) assess social validity of behavioral gains by evaluating the program's effects on participant's "subjective balance confidence" (i.e., their Activities-Specific Balance Confidence (ABC) scores). A reversal design is proposed for use with primary study participants, wherein the experimental gameplay condition and no intervention condition are alternated for 6 to 10 weeks. A similar design was used in a truncated fashion with pilot participants, and a multiple baseline design was used with follow-up pilot participants. It was expected that participants would exhibit …

Extensive research has been conducted demonstrating the utility of differential reinforcement as an effective intervention for self-injurious behavior. However, the majority of this literature requires teaching an alternative response to access reinforcement. Further evaluation of treating self-injurious behavior in individuals that already possess the repertories to contact reinforcement appropriately. Prior to initiating the study, functional assessments were completed for both participant that demonstrated high-rate bursts of mands served as a reliable precursor to self-injurious behavior. In the present study, we evaluated a waiting period and differential reinforcement of low rate behavior on reducing mands while keeping self-injurious behavior at or near zero levels. Results indicated that shorter waiting periods and DRL values were effective at reducing mands and maintaining near zero levels of self-injurious behavior.

Most horse training methods heavily rely on negative reinforcement and punishment. However, there is a movement in the horse community to utilize positive reinforcement to meet training goals. Although food has been used effective as a reinforcer with horses, social interaction has also been demonstrated to function as a positive reinforcer for animals. Utilizing social interaction as a reinforcer may lead to several benefits for both the trainer and animal. Some of the benefits can be improved relationships between animals and their caretakers and improved animal welfare. The purpose of this study was to apply Owens and Owens et al. previous research protocols to three equines to assess if social interaction, in the form of petting and gentle scratching, would function as a reinforcer. Using a changing criterion design, this study demonstrated that petting and gentle scratching could function as a reinforcer to teach three equines to stay and come in their natural environment.

There are many situations in which human performances appear insensitive to changing contingencies of reinforcement when compared to nonhuman operant performances. Explanations of these discrepancies have appealed to rule-governance and have provided some evidence that instructions produce these differences by restricting response alternatives as well as functioning as discriminative stimuli for other contingencies. In order to further evaluate these potential functions, a canonical study on rule-governance was systematically replicated. Five undergraduate participants were tasked with earning blocks by pressing a button during LED-signaled, fixed-ratio 7 and differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate 5-s schedules of reinforcement. Phase 1 of the experiment switched between these two schedules, with the schedule alternating every 1 minute. Phase 2 added instructions to "Go Fast" and "Go Slow" to the LEDs and programmed the lit LED to switch 30 seconds into each 1-minute session. Phase 3 removed the instructions from the LEDs and returned to the procedures of phase 1, with only one LED lit during each 1-minute session. Results showed that instructions influence the response rates as well as stimulus control over those rates. Results also showed that all participants ignored instructions conflicting with the reinforceable rate by the end of Phase 2. These findings indicate that instances of …

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate deficits in social behavior which may hinder them from engaging in social interactions. Results of descriptive analyses suggest that children who engage in prosocial behaviors, such as sharing, likely receive social positive reinforcement from peers in the form of attention. However, functional relations between prosocial behaviors, such as sharing, and their maintaining consequences have yet to be identified. Thus, the purpose of this study was to extend previous research by evaluating the naturally maintaining contingencies associated with sharing in three preschool-aged children with ASD. Functional analyses have traditionally been used to identify the function of maladaptive behavior; however, we extended the same methodological approach to identify functional relations of sharing. Results suggest that sharing was maintained by attention for two participants and was multiply-maintained by both attention and access to tangibles for one participant. These findings indicate that the functional analysis methodology is appropriate to understanding prosocial behaviors. In addition, results advance our understanding of prosocial behavior and may better inform methods of how to functionally teach sharing to individuals with ASD.

Recombinative generalization is a generative outcome that involves responding to novel stimulus combinations, and it can be facilitated through an instructional approach called matrix training. A learner's history with constituent stimuli and the arrangement of combination stimuli within the instructional matrix may affect the likelihood of recombinative generalization. To investigate this further, the current project assessed recombinative generalization with novel combinations of abstract stimuli by programming specific training histories for undergraduate student participants. The matrix training conditions were: (a) trained constituents with overlap training, (b) untrained constituents with overlap training, (c) trained constituents with nonoverlap training, and (d) untrained constituents with nonoverlap training. We evaluated whether and the extent to which recombinative generalization occurred in each matrix training condition in comparison to a condition that included training the constituents and providing a word-order rule. Finally, we compared the training trials in experimental conditions to directly training all constituents and combinations. The results suggested both overlap conditions and the trained constituents with nonoverlap condition produced recombinative generalization, and the trained constituents with nonoverlap condition was the most efficient. These results could inform the training order and stimulus arrangements practitioners employ to program for recombinative generalization.

The participant is a 61-year-old woman, diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder and profound intellectual disability who was referred to a behavior-disorders clinic, to increase cooperation with routine dental procedures. I used a behavioral treatment package consisting of stimulus fading, differential reinforcement, and extinction to establish tolerance of, and cooperation with, routine dental procedures. Results showed that cooperative responding varied throughout the progression of teaching the prerequisite steps (sitting in a chair, sitting in a variety of chairs, then working on sitting in the dental chair). However, by the end of the study, the participant engaged in the behavior of open mouth for 30 s and tolerated/cooperated with the experimenter using a plastic visual inspection tool for 30 s. Further research should evaluate the effectiveness of a similar treatment package to develop a more streamlined and systematic framework to improve compliance and tolerance.

A functional analysis (FA) is the most commonly used assessment methodology for identifying maintaining variables influencing problem behavior. However, if an FA does not produce clear differentiation, researchers and practitioners often then modify procedures to include additional individualized variables. The interview-informed synthesized contingency analysis (IISCA) provides a marked departure from FA methodology and aims to include individualized factors at the initiation of the assessment in order to more rapidly produce differentiation and clear results. We sought to further evaluate and compare the outcomes of two different functional analysis methods: the single-contingency functional analysis (FA) and the interview-informed synthesized contingency analysis (IISCA) to determine the function of problem behavior and evaluate the subsequent function-based treatment determined from the functional analysis results with two children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Both participants engaged in problem behavior maintained by single-contingencies of reinforcement identified within the single-contingency FA and emphasized by the effectiveness of each single-contingency function-based treatment.

Indicators of quality early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) include comprehensive interventions, adequately trained staff, high rates of effective instruction delivery, happy interactions between children and their teachers, and socially valid outcomes. When these are in place, high quality EIBI is more likely to increase progress that children with autism make during treatment. When not in place, progress is not as likely, as rapid, or as meaningful. To date, there is limited research regarding the correlation between these indicators of high-quality EIBI and the degree to which their effects are meaningful to direct consumers. The purpose of this methodological study was to compare direct, quantitative measures of teaching interactions (child initiations, teacher initiations, child affect, teacher affect) with qualitative measures (stakeholder ratings of teacher effectiveness, amount of opportunities for interaction and interest in the child) of teaching interactions to determine what sets the occasion for expert stakeholders to describe a teaching interaction as effective, quality therapy.

The participant was a 52 year-old woman, diagnosed with a profound intellectual disability, who engaged in high rates of severe self-injurious behaviors (SIB) predominantly in the forms of head banging and head hitting. A series of analyses and interventions was implemented to establish appropriate toileting behavior in the natural environment. Treatment consisted of conjugate reinforcement for optimal toilet positioning with the absence of SIB, episodic positive reinforcement of eliminating in the toilet, and programed generalization across environments and staff. Results showed the maintenance of optimal toilet positioning, decrease in SIB (under 1 instance per min), and appropriate eliminating in 96.3% of all available sessions. Direct support staff were trained to implement the program with 100% fidelity.

A computerized program was designed to test whether arranging a common element in two, otherwise independent, 2-term correlations (stimulus-stimulus and response-stimulus) would result in emergent simple discriminative-stimulus properties for the antecedent stimulus relative to an arrangement with no common elements programmed. Data from 8 adult participants in this experiment indicate that common element arrangements led to relatively high rates of responding in the presence of the putative discriminative stimulus and relatively low rates or no responding in the presence of the putative s-delta during testing in extinction. Conversely, the uncommon element arrangements produced no clear discriminative control. The current data reflect a comparison of arrangements across subjects. These data support Sidman's (2000) suggestion that common elements among contingencies are sufficient to produce stimulus classes and cause class mergers. The data also have implications for thinking about the mechanism by which and the conditions under which discriminative control develops. Finally, these data have the potential to inform the programming and implementation of reinforcement contingencies in applied settings.

Many clients with developmental and/or intellectual disabilities (ID/DD) do not tolerate routine medical or dental procedures and may require intrusive interventions, including restraint of various types (i.e. chemical, mechanical, physical, etc.) during appointments. Graduated exposure, or stimulus fading, along with reinforcement for compliance, have been shown to increase cooperation and tolerance in some clients; however, many do not respond to these types of interventions. Nine participants diagnosed with ID/DD recieved compliance/tolerance training for routine medical or dental procedures. Results of these interventions were evaluated in the context of several potential indices of readiness, such as medical diagnoses, level of disability, and presence of challenging behavior, among others. Several of the variables appeared to be correlated with program responsiveness; however, a larger sample will be necessary to draw definitive conclusions. Client characteristics and past assessments (anecdotals, preference assessments, terminal probes, and survey data) were evaluated. The analytical framework developed for this analysis may be useful to future researchers and clinicians as a model for assessing readiness for tolerance training programs.